


Shooting a Student Film

by VitaLupum



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 38,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VitaLupum/pseuds/VitaLupum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alex Kralie wants to make a student film, his two best friends are more than willing to help him. But they don't know what they're letting themselves in for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jay felt his breath catch a little in his chest as he took a seat in the classroom, feeling a little bit of trepidation sink into him as he let what little oxygen he had left after his sprint whoosh through his nose. He had slept in – on the  _first day back_  – and had thought he would have walked into a lecture hall of glaring sophomores; however, most people seemed to be chattering away, and he slid onto a spare seat, running a hand through his dark hair, which had decided not to behave today, sticking up at the front like TV antenna.

"Hey."

He turned his head to the left, and a familiar face greeted him, blue eyes dull with tiredness. Alex Kralie, holding a cup of coffee and looking characteristically unamused by Jay's red face and shortness of breath, slid up a little to accommodate his presence.

"You're late," he murmured, and pushed a second cup of coffee his way. Jay took it willingly, weakly grinning his thanks at his friend, and took a gulp, yelping as it burnt his mouth. He felt a little better already.

"Skilled as always, Warner," Brian laughed from the other side of Alex, and reached over to high-five Jay, who returned the gesture a little sheepishly, wincing at the loud noise that he was sure was going to drag more attention to his red cheeks. "Are we awake yet?"

"No. I hope they don't just launch us back into this straight away," Jay winced, and Alex smiled at him, shaking his head. "What, Kralie? It's Monday morning!"

"Dumbass," Alex grinned. "Did you forget? This year, we work on  _our_  projects."

* * *

"So, I know what I'm doing this year," Alex announced, as the trio trudged out into the pale sunshine that heralded lunch-time, already thoroughly overjoyed at their workload – or lack of – for the year. "I spent all summer writing the script for it, so I don't want to let it go to waste now we've got a free year."

"Thrill us, Kralie," Jay said, lying back against the bench and closing his eyes. The sun gently warmed his face, and he pulled his cap off, enjoying the light.

"It's a kind of drama, you know, kind of if someone wrote a coming-of-age novel then wondered 'what happened next'," Alex explained, sitting on the picnic table next to Jay's head and grabbing his cap, putting it on himself. "It's called 'Marble Hornets'."

"No offence, Alex, but that's the dumbest name," Jay murmured half-heartedly, and Alex shook his head, snatching the cap from his head and smacking Jay lightly with it.

"No, Jay, it's connected to-"

"Those statues your parents have two-thousand of?" Brian finished with humour in his voice, and Jay smiled, eyes still lazily closed. "I can't argue with that."

"Anyway, I need someone to play various parts in it, so would you guys be willing to act for me? Assuming of course you can act?" Alex asked bitingly, and Brian nodded, as did Jay. "Thanks, guys. I swear, there are Oscars in it for all of you," he added, humour in his voice, and Jay laughed, sitting up.

"Can we discuss this over, I don't know, lunch or something?" he pleaded, and Alex nodded. "Come on, Marble Hornets crew, let's  _go_!"

"I know someone who can do music, and maybe act a bit too," Brian said, taking a bite out of the Subway that was currently dwarfing his head. "Hif name'f-" he swallowed, eyes bulging a little as the sandwich refused to go down, and then coughed a little, "his name's Tim. He's doing Music at the moment, but he's cool, and he only lives a few doors down from me."

"Amy's got a couple of friends who can play the female roles," Alex suggested, and Jay nodded.

"I know some people who can do makeup and stuff," he said, in between bites of his own sandwich. "Want me to talk to them?"

There was a moment then, of impending  _something_  – and they all smiled. The year was going to be  _good_ ; they were going to make a kickass film together, and, who knew? Maybe even get a decent grade at the end.

"This is really coming together," Alex grinned. "Want to meet up? I'll get a few people, you guys call in some favours, and we'll get this show on the road. Is tonight good?"

* * *

Alex's living room was full by the time everyone who was coming had arrived. Jay had arrived first, closely followed by Sarah, a slim, brunette friend of Amy's, and then Seth, another guy from the Media class who looked around nervously and then sat next to Sarah, Brian and finally Tim, a heavyset guy with floppy brown hair and what seemed to be a permanent scowl.

"I guess you've all been told why I asked you to come here?" Alex asked, and everyone nodded, sneaking looks at each other. "Well, I figured I'd ask you officially, and it'd be easier to gather you all in one place and question you. I've written the script for a film-"

"Is this gonna be a full-length film?" Tim asked, folding his arms and leaning forward, and Alex nodded. "Oh, cool." His face had not changed from 'mild upset', but his tone of voice indicated he liked this idea. "So am I doing music, or acting, or what?"

"I was thinking maybe both," Alex said, and Tim nodded, leaning back. "Definitely music, if nothing else."

"So, like, who's playing who?" Sarah asked, and Alex held up his hands.

"This isn't any kind of decisive meeting," he clarified. "This is just a casual thing, to see who can do this, who can do  _what_ , and, you know, kind of get the ball rolling…"

The room filled with chatter, and Tim looked over at Jay.

"Hey," he commented, voice level and almost carefully weighted with interest. "You're Jay, right?"

Jay nodded, and Tim looked around.

"So, how many of these people do you know?"

Across the room, Sarah was chattering to Brian, who was clearly attempting to edge Seth out from the conversation using a shoulder and the old 'Brian-flirting' face, which settled somewhere between 'amusement' and 'constipation'. Seth rolled his eyes, and moved over to the couch containing Tim and Jay, who had struck up a tentative conversation about apartments in the area.

"This seems exciting," he said, awkwardly, and Jay nodded. "Do you think it's going to turn out okay?"

"I've not even seen the script," Jay laughed. "But as long as it doesn't turn into a horror or something stupid, it's fine by me."


	2. Chapter 2

The drone of the alarm clock woke Alex slowly and sluggishly the next day, and he struggled out of his covers, knocking the glass of water next to his bed over before finally surfacing. Rocky took this opportunity to come hurtling into the room, barking feverishly and jumping in the puddle of water that now sat on Alex's carpet. Alex filed this away as 'the moment everything went to hell in a hand-basket' and pulled on pants and a shirt, managing on the third attempt to get the shirt on the correct way round. Rocky jumped onto the bed and began to drool on the pillow, tongue lolling out.

"Rocky, down," Alex said patiently, and the Alsatian tipped its enormous tawny head as if daring him to enforce the command. "Oh, whatever."

He made his way downstairs, and after searching found his notebook, flicking through it to last night's notes. Jay had agreed to help with filming and perhaps a small acting role, as had Seth. Tim had volunteered for music and acting. Brian and Sarah had both decided their talents lay on the silver screen, not behind it, so they had been assigned the lead roles. Amy had called him to apologise for not turning up; she wasn't interested, but her friend Jessica could do makeup, so he'd taken her contact details. Seth, Jay and Brian had all had a few good ideas concerning location as well, so he was heading out with Seth today to check out a few places. He slumped onto the sofa, and winced as Rocky thundered down the stairs and jumped on him, wet paws all over his legs and drool-covered tongue all over his face.

"D-down!" he spluttered, and then shook his head. No need to get stressed. Rocky eventually settled on curling at his master's feet, and Alex let out a deep breath, before smiling. No big deal. Get a towel to mop up the floor. Let Rocky go and romp outside in the sunshine. It could all be fixed. If he stressed about things, he might go crazy-

The doorbell rang, and Alex jumped up, train of thought breaking. Rocky jumped up as well, woofing in gleeful excitement at having two playmates, and Alex had to fight his way to the door. Seth stood there, looking incredibly nervous in a large, green, fur-hooded coat, and as Rocky jumped up he flinched.

"Come on in," Alex said, and motioned for Seth to come in, grabbing Rocky's collar and dragging him in. "Come on, boy," he said to the dog, and Rocky, for once, obeyed, brown eyes full of curiosity and playfulness as he waited for his new friend to walk in the door.

"Hey," Seth said quietly, and Alex sat down, Rocky worming his way under his feet until Alex was essentially using him as a footstool.

"So, you said you had a couple of places for me to use?" Alex asked, and Seth nodded.

"Well, mainly one place, but I've got a map of the local park and a few places in there that might be good," he suggested, and Rocky woofed in joy at the word 'park'. "Uh, are we taking Rocky?"

"Nope, he's staying here, don't worry," Alex said, and laid a hand on the dog's collar. "You scared? I can kick him out." Seth shook his head, and then grinned nervously, one hand toying with his own collar.

"He's just  _big_ ," he mumbled. "Wouldn't want to break in here."

"Exactly," Alex nodded, and then stood up. "Uh, I've not eaten, so just let me grab a pop-tart or something…"

* * *

Meanwhile, Jay was wide-awake and had been since eight a.m., waking up on Brian's sofa with a faceful of pillow and a painting nearly on his head. He had had a brief moment of confusion, and then grimaced as he had peeled himself off of the leather sofa and sat up.

Right now he and Brian were going over their versions of the script together, both staring at some of the pages and rueing the day they had ever met Alexander Randal Kralie.

"This is the schmalziest…" Brian murmured, words fading into silence as he turned to page. "Hey, I get to kiss Sarah though."

"Hey, I don't have to act in this," Jay grinned, and shook his head. "You can slow-dance?" Brian's eyes widened in horror, and Jay leant over, showing him page 30. "You better learn, twinkle-toes."

"Goddamn you, Alex, getting us all swept up," Brian sighed, and then shrugged. "Hey, if we act the crap out of it, we might actually make this not suck."

"What's Tim's deal?" Jay asked, and Brian looked confused by the sudden change of conversation, and then his brow furrowed. "You know, the look like someone's taken his last Rolo." Brian grinned at this comparison, and then shrugged.

"Don't know. He always kind of looks like that. We met like, two months ago, and we've not hung around that much. I just knew he did music, and he was kind of okay." He shrugged, and threw the script to the table. "Anyway, are we doing anything today?"

"Not that I know of. We're meant to be sourcing props and stuff, but so is he and he's going location scouting, so I'm up for watching stupid amounts of TV all day," Jay offered, and Brian nodded.

* * *

Alex and Seth pulled up opposite the local secondary school, and Seth pointed to a footpath that went down the side of it.

"Down there," he said, and Alex turned off the engine, and climbed out of the car. "We're lucky it's not lunchtime, you're not technically supposed to be on this field…"

"Why not?" Alex asked, not liking the sound of this. Seth shrugged.

"It was a school field, but they ended up not being able to use it because of noise pollution and rare bird breeds in the woods and stuff," he said, and Alex nodded. "The footpath goes past it, and it's not visible from the school, but we still better be kind of quiet."

They set off down the path, Alex wishing he'd brought his camera so he could film this. He resolved to film the next location, and pushed on after Seth through the choking underbrush, pausing occasionally to push branches out of the way. It was clear this footpath was not in regular use, which was nice, because it meant fewer interruptions during filming.

"Through here," Seth said, and they were suddenly in an open, airy copse, which looked out over a field. Alex heard a clatter as he put his foot down, and looked down to see a cracked, broken cement path. Seth tapped his shoulder and pointed as they climbed the fence to get into the field, which still bore the remnants of a baseball diamond.

"Over there," he pointed to a tiny building that looked old and dirty. "That used to be a changing room for the school playing fields," he pointed out some rotting wooden bleachers across the field, "but, like I said, the woods there got added to a 'protected' register and they never did anything with it because… something to do with local wildlife and noise, I'm pretty sure." He nodded, unsurely, and then smiled. "I think we could film here if nobody noticed, which I doubt they will if we film out of school hours."

Alex walked up to the building, and pulled on the door. It creaked alarmingly, but would not open.

"It's locked," he said, and Seth looked at him sideways. "We can bring a crowbar. Maybe there's a window…" The director considered, and then shook his head. "No, we can use the outside of this if nothing else," he finally told Seth, and looked around, turning, and pointed into the distance. "Where is that?"

"That's Rosswood Park, the very edges," Seth said, and Alex nodded. "Maybe somewhere in there will look good."

"Jay's got somewhere for me to check out with a gazebo tomorrow," Alex told him, "and I think that's somewhere around here." He nodded, and suddenly they both saw it. Something that seemed far away but also right before their eyes. Alex's head whipped around and Seth's eyes blinked, watering, before he put a hand to them.

"Did you see that?" Alex asked, and Seth nodded, rubbing his eyes.

"Ow…" he flinched, and then shook his head. "Must've been a bird or something. Like I say, weird protected species there. Come on, let's go back if we're done here."

* * *

At that precise moment, Tim, Jay and Brian were having a thoroughly impromptu bonding session that included several crates of beer – provided by Tim's fake ID – and the knowledge that  _Saving Private Ryan_  was on the television. Sarah had been invited to take part in this, but had decided she would much rather go home and relax there, curling her nose up a little as she had left.

"We need a BBQ right now," Brian said, through a mouthful of popcorn, and Jay shook his head, eyes glued to the TV. "What, Jay?"

"You always think with your stomach, man," Jay grinned, and Tim rolled his eyes, taking a mouthful of beer.

"You know, I wish we were watching football," he said evenly, and Jay shook his head. "You don't like football?"

"Not since Alex pointed out we were cheering eleven sweaty men throwing balls around," he pointed out, and Tim snorted through his nose.

"Just because I'm sure about my sexuality," he muttered, and the television crackled for a brief moment, a circle with two lines on it flickering in the top left corner, before the film returned. "Huh?"

"Lost signal," Jay sighed. "That was what that symbol was, right?"

"Sure, why not," Tim shrugged, and stood up, punching the TV. The image rolled, and then continued to be just fine. "Fixed it." Jay thought about pointing out the fact it had fixed itself, but Tim's expression convinced him otherwise.


	3. Entry 5: Part 1

Jay woke up early that morning, unsure of why. His head felt a little bit funny, but he had been drinking the previous day, even if it really wasn't much, and so he put it down to that. He blinked a little, and then stretched, sliding his legs out of bed and turning his head to look out of the window. The weather seemed pleasant – not blazing sun, but not raining either. Alright for wandering around the woods in sneakers.

He showered, got dressed, had breakfast, did all the usual morning stuff without much incident; the only weird thing was that his camera had been moved from its case, where it always lived, to the top of the TV. He opened it, checked if he had recorded anything. Nothing, so he shoved it back in its case, cursing his absent-mindedness, and then Alex arrived and they left, laughing and joking about nothing in particular.

"Where we headed? Am I showing you that thing…?" Jay asked, and Alex motioned to the wall of trees that had sprung up on the left.

"Rosswood. You can show me that gazebo, and then we're going to kind of wander down to where the trees get thinner and we can check out there. And there's apparently some kind of ruin that I want to look at…"

* * *

Tim woke up, and winced, feeling the pain in his feet. Oh  _no_ …

He pulled the covers aside on the bed, and felt the familiar pain in his chest, the biting anxiety, as the mud and blood that smeared his feet and the covers was revealed. He sighed, and slid his legs from the bedcovers, hissing in pain as the thorns that were still stuck in them sent little sparkles of agony from his toes to his lower shin.

Again? He shook his head. He had been getting  _better_  – he hadn't gone sleep-walking for a month. Every time. It was just another crushing defeat to add to the many that he had undergone, and he leant his head against the wall, feeling the cool plaster settle some of the rage and bewilderment behind his brow.

"Fuck," he muttered. At least he didn't appear to have hurt anyone – that was his biggest fear. The day he found out he'd hurt somebody, he'd snap, and he didn't know what he'd do. That ever-present dark, horrible cloud that permanently threatened to swallow everything in his mind loomed now, spitting out cold lightning, and he shook his head.

Time for his medication. Definitely.

* * *

Jay pointed the camera at Alex and pressed the button.

"Alright, it's recording," he said, and Alex turned his head away.

"Okay, uh," he began, and wandered over to the edge of the gazebo. "This is the gazebo where I want Brian to come back and reflect later in the movie-" Jay, realising that he was cutting off the top of Alex's head, stepped back a little, "-uh, this'll probably be three-fourths of the way through."

"This'll just be by itself, right?" Jay asked, panning across the floor.

"Yeah," Alex said, still stood by the edge of the gazebo. "I'm thinking of putting in a lovely wool carpet, fireplace, you know, second floor, really doing it up." His deadpanning made Jay laugh, and he smiled himself, continuing, "Have a little slide going down into the forest for the kids, you know?" He shook his head, and then continued, "No, but in all seriousness, I think this is the perfect place, very symbolical with the man-made stuff in nature, uh, kinda contrasting, and we'll have Brian – uh, and then we'll have 'em, like, reflect and decide to actually go back to Sarah to try and win her back." He gestured down the hill. "Um, and we've a good number of shots here. We have the stream down there, um, and, we can have a number of shots of their young years take place down there, do a lot of camera trickery as if Brian's watching his childhood."

"Oh, like, split screen kind of thing?" Jay asked, and Alex shrugged.

"Not sure, maybe fade in, fade out kind of, um, stuff," Alex said, and Jay nodded. "I don't know, I want it to be quite dramatic, not too kitschy, you know. Very 'serious, grown-up' thinking, not some kind of crappy montage."

"I think this is the right place for that," Jay said, "it's the perfect area; it's very, I dunno, secluded, I guess." He shut the camera off, and gestured to the path. "Come on, camera's half out."

"Did you charge it?" Alex asked, and Jay shook his head.

"I completely forgot to recharge the batteries. Plugged the, uh, charger in, but never turned it on," he admitted, and Alex shook his head, socking Jay on the arm. "Hey, I'm sorry!"

"Come on, idiot, let's get to the next place," Alex sighed, and they began to walk along the trail. "So what do you think of this place?"

"It's… cool," Jay said, but in truth the forest just kind of gave him the creeps. It was sunny but cold, with a persistent breeze winding its way through the leaves, and the trees themselves seemed to stand like sentinels against something. He put it down to watching too many horror films for the course, and just shook his head. "Where we going now?"

"Oh, it's just kind of a field, you know, the one by the carpark. There'll kind of be some residual, you know, car noise, but that's fine, we can edit that out," Alex said, stumbling a little on the rocks. "Careful, if you break your ankle I'm not carrying you back."

* * *

Sarah sat on her bed, carefully painting her toenails. She wasn't entirely sure what she thought of this whole project, but everybody seemed nice, and she was definitely looking forward to it, even if the script was a little – lacking. She grinned, and lay back on the bed. Brian was actually kind of cute as well – but she wasn't particularly interested. He seemed a little over-eager.

Her phone buzzed, and she grabbed it.

"Hello?"

"Hey."

"Oh, hey, Jess," she grinned.

"Just saw your text, sorry, was out," Jessica apologised, and Sarah turned to fluff up her pillows before laying back and answering.

"Yeah, just wanted to know if you were interested in doing makeup? You know, for Alex's little project," she asked, and there was a non-committal sound on the other end of the phone. "Come on! It'll be fun."

"I'm really busy. If there was someone I could split it with, maybe," Jessica said awkwardly, and Sarah sighed. "You know how busy my course is, and I have work…"

"I do," Sarah admitted. "Well, what about Amy?"

"She said she wasn't interested. She says she's enjoying the balance between seeing Alex and not seeing him," Jessica laughed, and Sarah shook her head. "I swear, if they start spending any less time together, we can call this a long-distance relationship."

"Well, call me if you change your mind. Or call Alex or Amy if you can't get hold of me," she told her, and Jessica asked for Alex's number, which Sarah gave her. "You'll like Brian. He's kind of cute."

Jessica giggled, and the conversation degenerated into general chit-chat until finally Sarah's mother called her for dinner. Sarah hung up, and as she stepped onto the floor she noticed a weird symbol had been drawn on her window. It was kind of as if someone had breathed on it and drawn it with their finger and waited for it to fade – a near-invisible smudge, a circle with two lines through the middle. She sighed and buffed it off, forgetting about it almost as she passed through the door.


	4. Entry 5: Part 2

The next place they arrived was a part of the woods where it opened up onto a creek.

"Come film from here, you can see everywhere I want to film from this place," Alex said, and Jay walked to the tree trunk. The trees were beautiful here, the wood tinted red and the leaves a dark green that contrasted beautifully as sunlight filtered through them. Jay suddenly felt lucky that they lived there, for one wonderful moment. He began filming, and pointed the camera up at Alex.

"Alright."

"Alright. This is going to be near Sarah's hunting camp… uh…" Alex began, wandering towards his first point of interest. Jay followed him with the camera, and then zoomed in on the spot where clearly multiple other bonfires had previously happened.

"Yup," Jay said, prompting Alex as he panned back to him. Alex began gesturing with his hands, trying to get his thought thread back, and Jay grinned.

"Uh, I also want to have a-" Jay coughed, and Alex  _looked_  at him as he continued, "-shot of the next day where Sarah and Brian, and I might also have Tim there at some point, are sitting around thinking about the past, you know, just…" He paused again, and Jay panned the camera around, prompting him with another 'Yeah.' "talking about days gone by. Um, I really like this place since we have the tree line that basically-" he waved his hands at the trees vaguely, "-blocks off our entire shooting area and we have these really tall trees right in the middle-" Jay obligingly filmed one, "-which personally I just think are really cool."

Jay panned across the clearing again for something to do, and as he did so noticed something in the distance – a tall, red shape amidst the trees, way over the open ground and the creek.

"What's that tall, red thing over there?" he asked Alex, zooming in, and Alex shrugged.

"Yeah, that's like an old climbing wall, or-" he rubbed his head, "-I can't remember if it was a climbing wall or a fire department training thing. It's about three billion years old and, uh, made of old, rotten wood, so we're gonna film the scene where we kill Brian with a thousand splinters there." Jay had to think for a moment to try to remember if there was a death scene for Brian, and then laughed.

"You're such an idiot."

"Yeah, says the guy who thinks I'm letting any of you near that damn thing," Alex said flatly, and Jay smiled. "Nuh-uh. Not even if there's, I don't know, some kind of genie at the top."

"Loser," Jay teased, and Alex did not dignify the comment by looking at him.

"I like this field here," he said reflectively, "although I wish that tall grass were all level or we had more of this kinda rubbly stuff over here." He looked at Jay, who nodded, serious again.

"Yeah," he agreed, and Alex turned to him.

"I'm sure we can work our way around it," he said, and then sighed. "How was that?"

Jay cut, and shrugged.

"It sucked, like you," he said affectionately, and Alex shook his head, looking at Jay sternly. "What's this?" he asked, walking over to the creek, and Alex came to stand beside him.

"Oh, it's the creek that leads to…"

"Can I borrow your phone?" Jay asked, a wicked grin crossing his face. Alex passed him the phone, and Jay pretended to text whilst casually asking, "Uh, your watch… is it waterproof?"

"Yeah, up to ten feet, wh-" His eyes widened as he realised,  _just_  as Jay put his hand on the small of his back and pushed. Alex went sprawling on all fours in the knee high stream, and Jay almost dropped the camera in as he began to laugh. "You are  _out of this project, Warner._ "

* * *

Meanwhile, Tim had spent the day cleaning his house, primarily of the trail of mud and blood that led from the front door to his bedroom. His shower looked like a crime scene – he had spent the morning with a pair of tweezers taking out every last burr and thorn from his feet – and now he was lying on his sofa, hood pulled over his head, hugging a packet of Doritos to himself and contemplating suicide in a terrifyingly casual way. He did this more often than his doctors would like to hear.

His phone rang, and he picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Tim?" It was Brian.

"Oh, hey," Tim replied, and Brian coughed.

"Hope this isn't a bad time, but we need you for a shoot tomorrow… can you come? It's in Rosswood." Tim felt inexorable panic slide smoothly up his throat like vomit. God. Rosswood Park. They just had to, didn't they?

"Sure," he said, voice as calm and controlled as always.

"Cool, man," Brian laughed. "See you there." He hung up, and Tim rolled over to look at the ceiling. Rosswood Park.

He suddenly felt very much six years old, alone, and terrified.


	5. Entry 12

Tim woke up, and felt the calm nothingness that always came after he had spent a night actually sleeping. His feet felt alright, the covers settling over them like a protective cocoon, and he rolled over, slowly checking his arms. No blood, no cuts. If he could remember what happiness felt like, this could've been it, he reasoned. This feeling of relief after a night spent in bed, not roaming god-knows-where barefoot.

His phone rang, and he narrowed his eyes. Who the hell would be calling him? Alex, probably. He made his way downstairs, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello," he murmured, and there was a crackling hiss of static. "Hello?"

Another crackle.

Cold fear settled in his stomach, and he felt a cough rise in his throat. A barking rasp escaped his throat, and he shook his head.

"H-hello?"

"Tim?" a voice asked, and the adrenaline that had begun coursing through his veins was suddenly unnecessary, leading to a crash that left him slumped on the chair next to his phone, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Jay."

"Sorry, reception is goddamn awful out here," Jay said, and Tim forced a clipped laugh that turned into a cough. "Sorry, Alex just wanted me to remind you that you guys are filming tonight."

"Are you not going to be there?" Tim asked.

"Nope, I've got family commitments. Mom's birthday," Jay said down the phone, sounding quite unthrilled with this. "Seth won't be there either, he's feeling kind of ill, so Sarah's filming. This could be really hilarious."

"Ah, okay," Tim said, and happened to look in the kitchen. His heart froze, and as Jay said something he didn't register, he stared at the table, eyes wide.

"Tim?" Jay repeated, and Tim shook himself.

"Uh, gotta go. But yeah, I'll be there. Rosswood, right?" he said, forcing himself to keep his voice level. "By the creek." Jay confirmed this, and Tim hung up, his legs simultaneously compelling him to walk into the kitchen and desperately trying to persuade him to run away. As a result, the walk was so painfully slow that the hot terror in his guts was replaced by a cold dread that sank its way to his feet and made them heavy as lead.

There was mud and leaves all over the table, mud on the chair, and mud all over the tiny rectangle of photograph paper in the middle of the table. Tim forced himself to pick it up, staring at it.

It was the gazebo, and something lay on the floor.

In the dirt, someone – Tim was beginning to suspect that it was himself – had scrawled 'For you'.

* * *

"Are we ready to go?" Alex asked his makeshift crew, and Sarah nodded, saluting. Brian grinned at her, and she stuck her tongue out. Alex smiled to himself – Amy would be pleased. She liked Brian, and would trust him with one of her best friends. "Okay," he said, "we, uh, we're going to just film a little bit of the bonfire scene – obviously, not the actual main bit, just some of the other bits, to kind of get into character a little. Tim should turn up, but he, uh-" He took out his phone, and opened the text again. It had been very Tim – no punctuation, no smiley faces, no sign of humanity at all. "-he says that he's going to be, uh, a little bit late, so we're going to get all the kind-of couple-ish scenes done, see if you two can make it convincing."

Brian grabbed Sarah around the middle and picked her up, swinging her around as she yelped in shock.

"Me caveman Brian," he said, and Alex put his hand to his forehead, eyes shutting and a sigh escaping his lips. "Ug. Sarah Jane."

"Brian, Jane was with Tarzan – ah!" Sarah yelped as Brian swung her over his shoulder with a little effort, and made it a few yards before putting her down.

"Jesus, I have to work out," Brian winced, and Sarah punched his arm, laughing.

It was at this point that Alex noticed the stranger.

Across the field, a far distance away, stood a man – at least, it looked like a man – it was too far to tell, really. He was wearing a dark outfit – it looked a little like a suit, which made Alex slightly uneasy; he knew they weren't breaking the law being there, but it was still a little weird – and he appeared to be completely bald.

"Hey, who is that?" Sarah asked nervously, and Alex shrugged.

" _Hey_!" he called, and the figure did not respond. "I don't know," he mumbled, and tried to ignore the cold feeling that had dropped over his shoulders. "Maybe he just heard about this and wanted to watch us film."

* * *

Tim sat in his car, staring at the picture. The feeling of the mud on his fingers was disgusting, the thick, slippery liquid now almost dry. He felt like he could peel it off, like PVA glue.

It was only a short walk through the park, but it brought back some ugly memories, alright. He sighed, and gritted his teeth, fishing through his bag for his medication. He had waited for two hours longer than he should have, knowing he was coming out to the park now – he had taken a risk, but he wanted to be as clear-headed as he could be, both for this and for the shoot. He wasn't prepared to drive them all away just yet.

He got out of the car, looking up at the trees. The feeling that washed over him was part of the terror as well, as converse as it seemed – the feeling of safety they gave him, as if they were watching him. Maybe that was why he had run  _here_  as a child-

He shook his head, concentrating on the gazebo as he pushed the gate opened and took his first non-somnambulant steps into the woods since he had been six years old. The crunch of the twigs under his feet was as fresh as it had been all those years ago, and he felt the aura of the woods seep in under his jacket as he walked, hearing the babble of the tiny creek as he got closer.

The gazebo was new, so he did not remember it, having seen it for the first time when Jay and Alex had shown him the clip from the other day. But even from here he could see the thing lying on the floor, and as he approached it, he actually thought someone had had their face cut off.

It was a mask, he realised, and as he picked it up, he realised it was just made out of thin porcelain. He flicked it, and it made an almost pleasant 'tink' noise. He placed it to his face, and it fit him reasonably well.

He pulled it away from his face, and took another look at the front, tracing over the cheeks with a broad thumb. It was kind of feminine, with black, smirking lips and delicate curved eyebrows, but he took it anyway. After all, his sleepwalking self had made contact for the first time he could remember, and wasn't this a breakthrough?

* * *

Sarah set up the camera, and then gave the thumbs-up to Alex, who was still staring at the figure in the distance, brow now set in what seemed to be worry.

"You have to excuse me if you don't think I'm very good at this," she giggled nervously, and Alex shook his head, still staring at the figure. "Hey, do you want me to go ask him to go away?"

"Uh," he said slowly, and then shook himself, smiling at her. "Just start, uh… rolling." She pressed the button on the camera, and Alex remained staring at the distant figure. "Uh, I dunno. He'll move. Uh, let's go ahead and get this shot. It is so hot." He pulled out his shirt and fanned himself, and Sarah grinned.

"Okay," Brian said, looking away from the figure, and Alex steered him into position.

"Brian, we have the camera cut. Just get set to control it, and we'll be out of here in a moment," he said, and Brian nodded.

"Are we doing lines?" he asked, and for one odd moment of brain-crosswiring Alex thought he was talking about drugs; then he emerged into the real world, pulled himself together and replied.

"Not in this part, we're just, uh, walking," he said, clapping his hands to regain mental focus, "to the river and that's when you guys will start picking up. So, uh, just follow us as we cross into the frame." He began to walk, swinging his arms, and Brian started merely half-a-second behind him.

"Alright," Sarah mumbled to herself, concentrating on the camera screen. Nothing seemed to be going wrong, and the little 'recording' symbol was flashing. She followed them across screen, and Brian murmured something to Alex.

"I hope so," Alex announced loudly, and then stopped. "And that's about as far as we're going to go. We don't want s-"

Sarah didn't hear the next part, as Tim's car pulled up and she turned to see what the noise was, the camera swinging on its tripod to face the distant figure as if pulled by unseen hands.

"That would be gross," Brian laughed at Alex as they walked back.

"Oh, here's Tim," Alex nodded, and waved as Brian walked past the camera, and tilted his head. With three of them, it couldn't be hard to get the man to leave them alone. "Alright, uh, let's get him off the set… I hope he's not angry at us." He started to walk towards the man. "Hey! Buddy!"

The man remained where he was, head slightly tilted, staring at the camera, it seemed.

"What is he doing?" Sarah murmured as Tim joined her next to the camera, and jumped as the camera clicked and ran out of tape. "Hell…!"

"Hey, it's fine, the only person likely to shout at you is heading that way," Tim deadpanned, lit cigarette between his shaking fingers, as Alex headed towards the figure. "Jesus, it's hot. September is not supposed to be this hot, dammit." He felt nervous, but he was extremely determined not to show the others.

"Help me replace this camera tape?" Sarah asked, and Tim nodded, pulling open the side of the camera and taking out the old one. "Thank you…"

" _Hey_!"

Tim and Sarah both jumped out of their skins, and saw Brian and Alex come pelting back towards them, the tall man nowhere in sight. Both looked a little frightened, and Alex grabbed the camera.

"The tape, where's the tape," he asked urgently, turning to Sarah, and Tim put it in front of his face.

"It ran out as you wandered off to talk to that guy," he said, and Alex put a hand to his head, before breathing out slowly. Brian put a hand to his shoulder, and the bespectacled boy turned to him, shaking his head.

"You… he didn't… did you get any footage of him?"

"Yeah, the camera turned to him when Tim arrived," Sarah said, and Alex let out a sigh of relief.

"Did you see?" Brian mumbled, and Alex nodded, leaving Sarah and Tim staring in utter confusion. "He had something over his face. Some kind of stocking or something, but it looked like he didn't have a face at all."

"And then he just… he vanished. Right as we got to him. We both looked at each other, looked back, and he was gone," Alex said, and snatched up the camera, almost ripping the tripod from the bottom. "We're going. Now."

"But aren't we filming?" Tim asked, confused, and Alex shook his head. The look on Alex's face was enough to tell Tim the guy was scared out of his wits, and he nodded. It wasn't like coming out here had been a total waste. "Let's go."


	6. Entry 20

Tim stared at the mask.

It was definitely just an ordinary mask. He had spent ten minutes gingerly going over it, washing the traces of mud and leaves that it had picked up on the floor of the gazebo, and in the days that followed he had mostly ignored it… until today. The black makeup and eyebrows had been drawn on with a marker in almost impossibly neat strokes, and they had not washed off as he had rinsed it, implying along with the shiny finish it had been glazed again afterwards. He had Googled white masks, and about a million shops in Alabama stocked the damn things, with a million more in the surrounding states, so it was near-impossible to trace.

He picked it up and tried it on again. It fastened with an elastic band that went around the back of the head, and he felt it ping against the back of his head as he fastened it on.

Immediately he was seized by a coughing fit that brought him to his knees, hands scrabbling at the mask to rip it from his head as his lungs made a spirited attempt to escape his body. He succeeded in lifting it from his mouth, and finally managed to rip it off, inhaling lungfuls of fresh air, feeling a wave of panic wash from his feet to his brain. He stared at the smirking face as it lay on his floor, and scrambled to his feet, raising his foot to stomp on it.

* * *

"Reckon Tim'll show?" Jay asked casually, and Alex shrugged. Brian spluttered something through a mouthful of potato chips, and Jay turned to him. Brian swallowed and then tried again.

"Why don't you guy'f like him?" he asked, and then swallowed the rest of them. "It's not like he's been an asshole to you guys."

"He's just… grumpy," Jay hazarded, not wanting to offend Brian. Brian shrugged.

"You hated Alex when you first met him." Alex raised an eyebrow, and Jay turned to him, mouth open in an accusatory fashion that made Alex snort hysterically into his drink.

"You threw a football at my face in first grade. You knocked out one of my teeth," he said, and Alex threw his hands up.

"It was wobbly anyway! You got two dollars from your mom!" he argued. "And you told Stacy Simmons that I had a crush on her!"

"That was because you threw the ball at me!" Jay reminded him, fists clenching, and Alex shook his head. "Yes it was!"

As they argued, Seth turned up, sitting next to Brian, who welcomed him with a mouthful of crisps which might have been a 'Hello'.

"We bought you a- half a cookie," Brian said, pushing the cookie with a bitemark in it towards him. "You ready to do a little bite of filming tonight?"

"I've got tapes, I've got spare tapes, I've got spare spare tapes," Seth said quietly, and took a bite out of the cookie, carefully avoiding the nibbled side. "I've got a spare camera too." He took out his phone, and, as Jay and Alex actually started physically assaulting each other – in a friendly way – dialled his voicemail. "Dude, I got this from Tim half an hour ago."

The message was pretty much distressed coughing, but there was a weird static noise in the background that made Brian wince as it whined in and out of hearing.

"Sounds like he pocket dialled you," he finally said. "Did you call him back?"

"Sure, but no answer," Seth said uneasily. Had he been slightly less sweet and polite, he'd have voiced the same opinion of Jay, but Seth did not believe in judging people without knowing them. "I wonder if he's okay…"

"Well, he's coming tonight, so we'll see," Brian said.

* * *

Later that night, they settled in at Brian's house, Brian excusing himself to deal with a family emergency that had cropped up. It was less 'emergency' than 'Brian's mother flapping', but she had always been a tad flap-prone, and so Brian had left half an hour before filming began, with a promise that he'd be as quick as he could.

Now, set up opposite Brian's sofas, Seth gave them the thumbs up, and pressed the button, and then accidentally pressed it again.

"Damn…" he mumbled, before picking it up and beginning filming once more, hoping nobody had noticed.

"Alright, uh, let's see… we'll do a little special featurette here for the d-" Alex began, and Jay cut in, tension in his voice a little audible.

"Yeah, since we're waiting for Tim, who's running kind of late," he laughed tersely, and Alex pointed at Seth.

"Put the, put the screen over for me," he said, and Seth flipped the monitor over so Alex could see. He winced, and then smiled. "That looks awful." Seth turned the camera off, and Alex shook his head. "Oh, no, no, not your camera work, the lighting and the… the big blank wall here. Keep filming. And Jay, try to relax." Seth began filming again, and Alex stood up.

"Where'd that painting go, that…?" he trailed off, and Jay looked behind him.

"Uh…" he said, as Alex swept past, and seized upon the picture. It was, in Seth's opinion, quite frankly hideous; a smudge of orange in the middle of some depressed grey trees. However, he bit his tongue.

"There we are!" Alex said in satisfaction. "I took it down, now I want it back."

"You've got full creative control here," Jay said in faux-seriousness as Alex placed the painting on the back of the sofa.

"There we go," he said, and sat down. "Not even going to put it on the hook." Seth did not notice, but the camera flickered off and then on again, the footage cutting neatly as Alex's hands left the painting. "Brian has excellent taste in art." Seth grinned, and lifted up the camera, zooming in on the painting. It was really quite incredibly creepy, that painting. He was going to have nightmares about that. He turned it off and on again, so that it zoomed out instantly and left merely a neat jump, and then nodded to Alex to continue.

"So we're here on the set of Marble Hornets at Brian's house. Brian is somewhere; I don't know where…" Alex said, the smile never leaving his face.

"I wasn't… I wasn't paying attention. Were you?" Jay joked, and Alex looked over at his best friend.

"No." There was a moment where they both nearly cracked up, and then Alex continued. "Um, we've been doing some script revisions for, uh… coming up here-"

"I've been supervising that because I am the Script Supervisor… for now," Jay interrupted, voice creepily ominous at the end as Alex cut across him.

"Yes, yes, Jay has been very helpful today. I'm very proud of him." They swapped grins again. "We are just waiting on Tim to get here. We're gonna give him the new script; maybe go over some new lines…" As Alex began to tap his leg, Jay lifted up the script and turned it around.

"This is the new script," he said, and Seth smiled, watching the scene unfold. If he had looked at the camera, he would have seen the picture was fuzzed and snowy, but he was too busy trying to look at the script to actually watch the miniature screen. "I helped, but, you know, all changes have to go through him." He motioned towards Alex.

"Well, you know, I am the King of the Script. It's my baby," Alex said imperiously. "I am effectively God, but we knew that." Seth actually took a look at the screen, and gave it a flick with his index finger. The image righted immediately.

"It's a whole lot of power to give someone like him," Jay said seriously, looking at the camera, and Alex looked up at him, smirking.

"Yea, uh… you know, pretty much everyone's at risk. It's a… terrifying place-" He was about to add 'for you guys' when there was a rap on the door. "And there's Tim, so… Come on in!" he added jovially, and got up to welcome in Tim. Seth got up to follow him, and saw Jay shake his head and look at his watch.

"How you doin', Tim? Drive alright?" Alex asked, and Tim nodded, eyes squeezed shut.

"Eh, it was okay. Sorry I'm late."

Seth looked over the camera in concern. Tim was pale, his eyes lidded, and as he walked straight past Seth he lifted a hand to his head.

"Ugh, geez… how…? Why is it so cold in June?" he added, and there was just enough of a laugh at the end of it to throw Alex and Jay off. But not Seth. He was still a little alarmed, alarmed enough to shut the screen of the camera without realising it would turn off the recording.

"Ah, crap," he mumbled, and Alex, who had followed Tim in, turned to him. "I, uh, shut the camera off." He opened it again, and Alex shook his head.

"Don't worry, Tim and I are just gonna go through the script. I'll tell you if I want you to film," he said, offhand, and Seth nodded, setting the camera down. Jay came to join him on the sofa, and the two of them began to talk as Alex and Tim ran through the script.

"Does Tim look a little bit dead to you?" Jay asked quietly, and Seth nodded.

"I didn't want to say anything," he whispered, "but Jesus. He looks like he hasn't had a full night's sleep since we last saw him."

"I wonder what's up with him?" Jay murmured, and Seth shrugged, keeping his eyes firmly locked just over Jay's shoulder. It was obvious enough they were talking about Tim, he reasoned, no point in emphasizing it.

"I don't know, but…"

"Could we have some filming?" Alex asked, and Jay scarpered back to his seat as Seth snatched up the camera.

"Don't look at the camera, Tim. Let's go," Alex said, and Seth began filming. "Let's, uh, go ahead and start over from, uh… 'I'm tired of this'." Tim looked it, and he shrugged, face pinched and drawn.

"That's… yeah-" he mumbled, and Tim half-heartedly interrupted with a 'yeah' of his own.

"Actual lines," Jay prompted, obviously thinking along the same lines as Seth, and as Alex agreed Tim waved the script at them both, eyes filled with fatigue.

"Well, speaking of what, I'm really tired of this. I really need a break now," he said, and twisted his way out of his seat, stumbling towards the door. The suddenness of this left Alex looking very confused.

"Ah-" he mumbled. "Alright." He skipped over to where Tim had just been sitting, and as the room filled with the sound of pained, hacking coughs Jay looked up at the others.

"Uh, take five, I guess…?" he suggested, and Alex looked down at the script.

"Take five," he said casually, and the coughing continued.

"Yeah…" Jay said, looking over at the script, and Alex nodded, refusing to look up at him.

"Everything highlighted for him? He's…" he continued, voice trailing off at the end as another cough overtook them, and Jay took up the slack, talking a little louder to cover the noise.

"I think so." There was a rattle, and Seth narrowed his eyes at the others. That sounded like an asthma inhaler or a pill bottle or something – something  _medicinal_. "I think I got it all, I mean, he should…"

Tim gave another effort to cough up a lung in the hallway, and Jay and Alex looked at each other before looking towards the sounds.

"Wow," Alex said, calmly.

"Seriously?" Jay asked, jerking his thumb towards the noise, and Alex threw the script together, standing up, as he said, "Wanna go check?"

"He shouldn't have come if he was sick," Alex said, offhand, but Seth and Jay both heard the concern in his voice, and both followed him as he led the way to the hallway. "You alright, Tim? You need anything?"

Tim was hunched against the hallway wall, clutching something and a bottle of water in his hands and struggling to breathe. His expression still hadn't changed from 'stoically unamused.'

"No, I'm okay," he said.

"What's that?" Alex asked, voice light and filled with gentle terror that Tim was going to drop dead on Brian's floor. Tim turned around, back straightening a little.

"Just some…" He began, and shoved it into his pocket, still holding the bottle of water. "Just some medicine I have to take." He sounded a little hoarse, but, Seth reasoned, you would if you'd just spent several minutes almost throwing up your own lungs, following everyone back into the front room.

"Uh, do you need to go home? Should we cut?" Alex asked, still trying to keep his tone relaxed and casual, and Tim shook his head.

"No, I'm  _fine_ ," he said adamantly, and headed back for the sofa.

"Alright," Alex said, and the camera whirred as it ran out of tape. "Oh, god _damn_  it."

"It's okay, I brought new tapes," Seth volunteered, and Alex shook his head, motioning towards Tim as he looked away for a moment. "Oh, wait… I left them in the car…" he lied, quite badly, and Alex smiled at him.

"You wanna hang around here for a bit?" Jay asked Tim, who shrugged.

"Whatever you guys are doing," he said, weakly, and that settled that.


	7. Entry 17

The next day, Alex woke up to find Rocky lying forlornly at the foot of the bed, and as he sat up, reaching over to stroke his head, the dog let out a forlorn howl that left Alex's ears ringing.

"Shh, Rocky, it's okay," he murmured, and the dog whined before licking Alex's palm and dropping from the bed, padding his way out of the room. Alex shrugged and pulled on a t-shirt, looking around. Everything  _seemed_ fine, nothing out of place or anything – but after last night, with Tim's coughing fit, he just couldn't shake the feeling that everything wasn't quite right. He shrugged, and then made sure his windows were locked, just in case, before heading downstairs, feeding Rocky, and making himself a slice of toast.

He considered calling Jay, and then decided against it. They were meeting up with Tim to film something they had intended to film the previous day, but had been unable to due to Tim's coughing; Tim had suggested doing it today, and although Alex had his reservations, he had said 'yes'.

* * *

Tim woke up, and felt his chest constrict a little as he tried to breathe and the thing over his face stopped him. He put his hands to his cheeks, feeling only cold, smooth stone, and he nearly screamed before he realised that he was wearing the mask. He tore the elastic from the back of his head, and went to fling it away before remembering what had happened the last time he had tried to harm it. So he placed it gently next to the bed, and ran his hands over his eyes, feeling the familiar pinpricks of stones and thorns in his feet. The least his sleep-self could do was wear shoes, he thought bitterly, and pulled his leg up to examine the damage.

Nothing too bad – the usual cuts and scrapes. He sighed, and decided to keep a pair of shoes by his bed, in case his sleep-self took the hint. The mask smiled at him, and he snatched it up.

"You are going in the goddamn cupboard," he hissed, and realised all at once just how completely crazy he actually was. He was blaming a mask for this, his insanity – it had been going on a lot longer than the mask had been in his possession for. He remembered something one of the various doctors had told him, about it being easy to blame something inanimate and attach focus to that as the root of your problems. Then again, the doctor had never had…  _that_ … happen to him… after he had tried to destroy something.

* * *

Jay woke up, and felt  _cold_. Damn it, he was sick, he cursed, and shivered, pulling the covers around him. He didn't  _feel_  sick – no sneezing, sore throat, headache, nothing like that. Just very cold. He remembered somewhere that feeling cold actually meant you were hot, and your body was just messed up, so he pulled the covers off and got dressed, before digging the thermometer his mother had bought him – 'just in case, James!' she had said – and taking his temperature. It told him, against all sensory input, that he was completely fine, so he simply grabbed a hoodie and headed out of the door, pausing only to grab a cereal bar and his camera.

The drive to Brian's was made with the windows up and the heater on full whack, and when he arrived he pulled his jacket even tighter around him.

"Hey," Brian grinned, and Jay raised an eyebrow.

"Where are you going?"

They set up the scene, with Tim wedged into the corner of the window, and as Alex set up the camera, Jay shuffled into place, shivering. Alex didn't notice, but Tim did, and he looked at him oddly as he pulled his coat tighter around him.

Brian excused himself for snack purposes, eliciting a groan from Jay as he knew he would have to stand in for him, and as he breezed out Jay wedged himself into the corner, trying desperately to shelter himself from the cold that hissed in through the doorway.

"You okay after last night?" Alex asked breezily, and Tim nodded, leaning back against the window. "We got you a drink, in case you need it." He handed him a can of coke and started filming, and Tim cracked it open, grateful for the gesture.

"Do you remember that time your dad was letting us shoot cans off the wall in your back yard, and you shot one, and it hit next door's cat?" Jay asked, grinning as the memory returned, and Alex put a hand to his face.

"And we both cried, because we thought we were going to be arrested?" he said, and Jay cracked up, leaning against the wall.

"I remember once I figured out how to stomp on a Coke can so it sprayed all the way up the school wall and hit the roof," Tim commented, and Alex and Jay looked mildly impressed – whether with the feat he had managed or the fact he was making conversation, he couldn't tell.

"Jesus Christ. If you'd done that in our school, you'd have probably been king of the yard for a week," Jay laughed, and Tim nodded.

"Oh, man, the girls all saw. They were so impressed; I had to do that about five times," Tim said, and Alex nodded.

"That's a good story," he said, and Tim took a swig from the can. Alex noticed the low battery sign, turned off the camera, changed the battery, all the while fending off the evils from Jay with apologetic grins, and then resumed filming.

"Jay, if you wanna stand where Brian's gonna be, and read his lines for me," he said, and Jay edged his way the spot where Brian should've been. Alex went to hand him a script, and he shook his head.

"Yeah, I got the script here," he said, and Alex nodded.

"Alright."

* * *

Brian walked down the street, whistling casually to himself. Tim looked perfectly fine – he had no idea what the others had been talking about last night, although Tim had looked kind of rough when he'd gotten back – and if he got back in time, they could actually  _shoot_  something, some for the film, something _really_  good, and without creepy tall men appearing in the background of it as well – he hoped.

He turned into the shop – bought a couple of bags of crisps; a few bottles of Coke; a multipack of sweets that he hadn't eaten since third grade, but that he decided he missed; a packet of marshmallows; and three enormous bags of pretzels that were on offer. Paying for them, he walked back out of the shop – and smack-bang into Seth.

"Hey, dude," he said, and Seth looked at him, eyes wide. "Man, you okay?"

"Oh, Jesus, thank God you're here," he said, and Brian nodded. "Not that I was expecting to find you here, it's just a nice surprise-"

"Seth, you are babbling," Brian said flatly, and hustled him out of the shop doorway, standing him next to the window. "What  _are_  you talking about?"

"Is he still following me?" Seth hissed, and Brian looked around. There were a couple of people around – a guy walking his dog, two girls giggling together as they walked down the street, a couple, an old woman and a young man talking casually. He shrugged, pointing at the guy with the dog, and Seth shook his head.

"Who?" Brian asked uneasily, seeing the fear in Seth's eyes. This was  _serious_ , not just some weird thing the guy had said. "What happened?"

"I was out with some of the guys from college," Seth mumbled. "You know, just hanging around. Some of the guys were about to go hang out down by the tennis courts, you know?" Brian nodded. "So I was going to walk up here, see if you wanted to hang out, if Tim was around, you know." He swallowed, and his brown eyes flickered from side to side nervously. "And then The Guy appeared." He put extra emphasis on the words.

"You haven't told me what guy," Brian said, and Seth shook his head.

" _The Guy_. He was in your video. You know…"

"The really tall one?" Brian said sharply, and looked around, an icy chill running down his spine as he felt some of Seth's fear transfer to him. Shit! He knew he should've helped Alex chase the guy off or something… Seth nodded, and Brian grabbed his shoulder. "Let's go."

* * *

"Am I out of the frame?" Jay asked, and Alex nodded.

"Yeah, you're good. Uh, you know where we're starting, Tim?" he asked Tim, and Tim looked up at him blearily.

"The, uh, 'Why did you come back'?" he said, rubbing his eye. God, either time had slowed down, or this was actually taking hours and hours.

"Yes," Alex confirmed, and Tim shook his head a little. He felt wrong. He felt like he was being watched…

"All right," he said, aware of Alex's eyes on him, and Alex smiled a little nervously.

"And, uh, let's uh… Just, whenever you're ready," he said, and Tim leant back against the wall.

"Okay," he said, more to himself than Alex, and then, "So why'd you come back?"

"I had to," Jay replied, and as he looked up from the script he saw Tim bite his lip nervously. Cold bit into him again, and he shook his head, shifting about a little.

"Was it because of Sarah?" Tim asked, trying to inject a little flow into his voice. He was aware it sounded slightly forced, but the entire script was kind of sappy, really. And it was only a rehearsal, really, until Brian got the hell back.

"I thought I'd be able to leave her behind along with this rest of this town, but I just can't seem to get her out of my head," Jay read as fast as he could, trying not to launch into Kylie Minogue at the end. He bit his lip.

"I thought you said you were over her," Tim asked, brow furrowing as he caught Jay's expression but not the reason behind it, and Jay couldn't help it.

"I thought so, too," he grinned, and his voice wobbled enough at the end for Alex to cut straight in.

"That… That's far enough," he said, and Jay turned to control his grin and pull his coat around himself some more.

"Stop there?" he asked, and Alex nodded, looking between the two of them as Tim's poker face did not even as he watched Jay sink his teeth into his lip and then turn back to Alex, doing his best to look innocent.

"Yeah, let's not do too much, uh…" Alex said, and Tim dropped in a question before Jay actually exploded.

"Who, uh, who wrote that dialogue with you, Alex?" he asked, desperately hoping there was someone else they could blame, but Alex looked between the two of them again, Jay now almost purple with supressed mirth and Tim just looking mildly confused.

"That was just me…" he began.

"Okay," Tim said, moving slightly so Alex looked at him instead of Jay, who began to laugh silently into his sleeve. He wasn't even sure why – the combination of Kylie and Alex's less-than-stellar scripting had combined with the fact that laughing would really piss off Alex, and tickled him.

"Uh, I do all the script for this," Alex finished, and Tim nodded, seeing that Jay was now possibly slightly more under control. Jay shot him a sneaky thumbs-up that he returned as Alex turned to mess with the camera.

"Oh," he said lamely, and Alex shot a look between both of them once more.

"Uh, you know where Brian is?" he said, choosing to change subject, and both of them regained serious faces, not that Tim's had ever been otherwise, and Tim shrugged.

"I think he said he was just running down to the store for some snacks or something. He should be back any minute."

"Okay." Alex looked at his watch. Brian had been gone  _over an hour_ …

"Hey, can I, uh, can I get some water or something?" Tim asked, having finished his can twenty minutes ago. Alex replied in the affirmative, and Jay turned to the bottles of water that lay on the side.

"Is this one yours?" he asked, selecting one, and Tim nodded, not actually remembering starting a bottle, but quite frankly he was so thirsty he didn't care.

"Yup."

"No problem," Jay said as he handed him the water, and Alex looked at him oddly.

"Why are you wearing a jacket?" he asked, and Jay looked at him.

"It's pretty cold in here," he reasoned. If it wasn't him, it  _had_  to be the room, right?

"I'm comfortable," Alex replied, looking at him oddly, and Tim looked at him as well as he finished drinking and handed the water back to Jay.

"I feel like you've got the A/C cranked up or something." Jay turned, and looked at the camera. "Uh, you left the camera on."

Alex looked at it. "Oh. Uh, well, we're gonna go through it a couple more times, anyway, but thanks. We'll just, uh, leave it on."

Tim went to say something but was interrupted by Brian and Seth making their way in through the door. Both looked slightly horrified, and Brian ran to the window where Tim stood, peering out.

"Did you see him?" he asked, turning to Tim and then Alex. They both stared at him in confusion. "Outside?"

"Brian, it probably wasn't him…" Seth said, sounding less sure of his words than anyone in the room, but Brian shook his head and motioned to the window.

"Would you like to explain why the, ah, crazy meeting is taking place in the house?" Tim asked curiously, and Brian explained the situation up to the point where he had met up with Seth – then he told them how they had gone and got Seth's car, and circled around the block a few times. As they had arrived back at the house, Seth had taken one look at the window, seen that the tall man was  _staring in through the window_  and freaked, and that was when they had rushed in.

"He's got be someone we know," Alex shrugged, and Seth nodded, shuddering.


	8. Entry 2

Brian stopped at the front door, wondering if this was a good idea at all. But damn it, he had brought Tim into the group, and it was kind of his responsibility, he guessed, to make sure the guy was alright.

He reached out, and knocked, and waited as the noise echoed down the hallway on the other side of the door.

"Cold, cold, cold," he sang to himself, hopping from foot to foot. The beautiful sunshine of the last few days had vanished, and now there was a little bit of fall chill in the air. He stamped his boots on the floor, and as the door swung open he smiled.

"Hey," Tim said, and Brian's eyes widened.

Tim looked fucking awful. His eyes were rimmed with red and lavender, his face was pale and unshaven, and he kept licking his lips nervously. He held a cigarette in one hand, and as Brian's mouth dropped open he smiled, with no humour present anywhere else on his face at all.

"I didn't sleep so good last night. I feel ill," he said, and Brian nodded, shutting his mouth as he realised this might not be considered very polite.

"Oh, er, should I go away?" he asked feebly, and Tim shook his head.

"I don't think it's catching," he said dryly, thinking  _Hoo boy, you have no idea_ , and stood aside, letting Brian walk in.

The entire house was shut up, blinds drawn, stinking of cigarette smoke, and the only light was from the TV. Tim caught the look Brian gave – one of mild horror – and opened the living room blind, wincing at the light as he did so. He was beginning to get a headache.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked, and Tim sat on the sofa, taking a drag of the cigarette. "You sure you should be smoking?"

"Yeah," Tim said, and took another drag. Brian sat down, and Tim avoided looking at him. He looked, and saw Brian staring at him. "Bri, I am fine."

"You look fucking wrecked." Brian's voice was frank, but Tim heard the concern, and he supposed he would've been thankful for it, if he were capable. As it was, he was more irritated, but he shoved it all in the bucket of his soul where he kept all the other inappropriate reactions, and smiled. "Tim, don't just give me that blank grin."

"You don't know." Tim had spat this at Brian before he had realised the bucket was overflowing, and then he put his head in his hands. "Brian, I'm sorry…"

"If I don't know, why don't you fucking  _tell_  me?" Brian asked, and Tim came dangerously close to doing it as well. He opened his mouth, fourteen years of absolute hell poised on his tongue, and his brain stopped him at the last second, reminding him that telling other people he was clinically depressed probably wasn't a good idea. It would spread, rumours would start. He would be known as the loony, and after fourteen years of trying to control it, keep it normal, of finally clawing back his life, that was the last thing he wanted or needed.

So he sighed, and shook his head.

"It's just… I'm having a bit of a rough time," he said, deciding that a white lie did no harm, and Brian tilted his head.

"Talk about it. We're all here for you, man," he said, and Tim felt, for the first time, maybe they were. Maybe not Alex, or Jay, but Brian and Sarah and probably Seth as well. He realised his headache had receded. "Listen, if you want, we can get everyone around. We need to discuss Hornets stuff," he grimaced, "but, you know, we'll all come round, hang out. It'll be fun! There's a new girl, Jessica, she's nice…"

As Brian began to talk, Tim felt himself lighten up a little bit, and the black cloud receded to its usual corner, snarling and thundering but  _receding_  until finally he was able to smile and have it almost look real. Brian had his phone out, and was calling the others, and Tim almost told him not to until he realised perhaps surrounding himself with people was a good idea.

He took a glance at the cupboard where the mask lay, and for one sickening instant the other day – those terrifying, agonizing moments after he had dared consider breaking it – came back, and he decided having  _anyone_ around was a good idea.

* * *

Jay had received the call from Brian, and had been convinced to give the others a lift on the proviso they provided him with petrol money, something he was more than happy to do. He wasn't entirely sure what was wrong with Tim, but if cheering him up meant the film went smoothly, he was fine. Alex was unreachable, but Jay knew that about this time he was normally unreachable for various reasons, so he had told the others to abandon the attempt and was swinging around to pick them up, and he would pick up Alex a little later, perhaps.

After yesterday, and the day before, he was going to ask Tim to talk to a doctor. The guy wasn't just physically ill – he was  _definitely_ physically ill, but Jay could feel that wasn't the extent of the guy's problems – he was shirty, evasive, and paranoid. Another thing – and Jay had realised this – was that he never really smiled. His mouth did, but his eyes were dull and full of – well, nothing. They were very empty, and this unsettled Jay.

But then Brian, Sarah, Seth and Jessica appeared as he rounded a corner, and he set this thought aside to return to later.

* * *

"Time to let in the rest of the guys and gals," Brian grinned as the doorbell sounded, and Tim went to the door, letting in Seth, Jessica and Sarah, who all filed into the front room, Sarah and Brian on the sofa with, Seth alone on the other couch.

"Jay should be here, but he's apparently parking on Mars," Sarah sighed, taking a gulp of beer, and Seth laughed, pulling out a camera from the bag as he spoke.

"I'm sure he's parking as fast as he can," he said in his quiet voice, "since it's…" The soft patter of rain interrupted his speech, and he nodded. "There we go."

Brian winced, looking out of the window, and Tim sat down next to Sarah, who immediately captured him in conversation about her new car.

There was a knock, and Tim opened the door to find Jay, utterly soaked, stood there. He pushed a crate of beer into Tim's hands, and Tim nodded, ushering him in.

"Thanks," he offered, and Jay smiled at him.

"If you can drink it after the other night. You know, after your throat imploded," he said, and his voice got a little more serious as he asked quietly, "are you okay now?"

"Sure," Tim said, and then nodded emphatically. "Go sit down."

"We're ordering  _pizza_ ," Sarah told him, and Brian was noting down various orders as the others all looked through the menu that had been lying on the table. Tim sat down, and began to hand out the beers, only Jessica refusing one.

The talking about the project lasted mere minutes, everyone glad to finally concentrate on other things for a while. Tim found his keyboard and everybody had a go at playing it, most having nothing more than a rough attempt at  _Fur Elise_  or  _Chopsticks_ ; however, Seth managed some Handel, to Sarah's delight, and Jay managed to figure out a rough version of  _Silent Night_  through trial and error.

"I wonder where Alex is?" Seth murmured at one point, but was mostly ignored.

* * *

Alex, at that point, was going somewhere he did not want to go at all; driving down the road, camera on his dashboard, Rocky in the back panting noisily. He was not sure why he was filming this, but he knew he felt better for the eye of the camera.

"I got home late tonight," he began, not sure if he was talking for his own benefit or for the camera's, "and I was taking Rocky for his walk about, uh, twenty minutes ago, so around midnight. This was near the set of Marble Hornets." He swallowed, and looked in the rear-view mirror. "A little bit farther down the road we saw this really tall guy standing in the middle of the street, just completely still."

He felt so stupid as he said it. Yeah, tall men weren't  _allowed_  to stand in roads. How  _weird_  of tall people. But he cleared his throat and carried on.

"For whatever reason, this really set off Rocky, and, um… he g-" Here he had to swallow, as his throat had suddenly gotten so dry he could barely stand it. "He got really scared. He… wouldn't move and he kept on pulling on his leash to go back home."

Rocky had never liked strangers. Granted, he had never reacted so strongly or weirdly to the presence of someone he didn't know, but it was hardly out of the ordinary for a dog to freak out at people it didn't know, and a dog like an Alsatian that was  _geared_  towards antagonism? Secretly, he couldn't stop thinking of the man in the park, the man he could only  _just_  remember…

A streetlight appeared, and he slowed down.

"There was something about this guy that was just… it was strange," he said lamely, and swallowed again. "So, uh, we headed back home. I have a little bit of time left on this tape, and, um, I'm going to go see if he's still hanging around. In fact, I think this is the light he was standing under, so I'm going to go have a look here…" He slowed and stopped the car, pulling into a layby, and climbed out of the car. Seeing nothing, he panned the camera across the scenery. "Okay, you can't really see it well on the camera, but… I don't see… anyone around here, so I guess he's… moved on. Uh…" He wished he could stop stuttering, but the fear in his gut would not leave him. "But, yeah, there's just something about that tha…"

The camera clicked as it stopped recording, and he sighed, turning back to the car. Maybe it had been nothing after all. He climbed back in, petted Rocky on the head, and drove off, and when the hair's stood up on the back of his head, he ignored it and just drove on.


	9. Entry 4

It had been a week since Alex's encounter on the road, and he finally felt himself beginning to relax. He had given the team a week off, and had begun to edit the footage into semi-coherent sequence. This had given him cause for alarm in several places – firstly, there appeared to be audio distortion on a few tapes, leaving the footage unusable or at the very least difficult to process. Secondly, on several of the videos – Tim in the window, Jay filming the red tower – he swore, at moments, he could see the tall man. It was making him paranoid, quite frankly, and he had spent the first few days of the week alone, just Rocky and him and the tapes. However, when Jay had turned up on Thursday with a stupid cop movie, a bag of snacks and a wounded expression, he had relented and the two of them had had a stupid evening of dicking around, just how it used to be. This had given him courage, and he had worked through the rest of the week, seeing Seth, Tim and Sarah on Saturday to go and see one of Tim's friends play in a band, and now on Sunday he was curled up and sleeping deeply, breathing light and soft as Rocky snored from the foot of the bed.

The masked figure at the window watched as Alex rolled over, covers kicked to the foot of the bed. Then, very slowly, its fingers hooked into claws, and it scraped its fingernails down the window.

Alex blearily blinked awake as Rocky awoke, letting out a deep, warning 'woof', and saw the white face at the window just as it vanished.

His reaction was instinctive; he lunged for his camera and glasses, and charged downstairs, tumbling out of the door and only just remembering to close it as he heard Rocky's thunderous paws on the stairs. He raced to his car, ignoring the whining from behind the door, and realised in the time it took to get into his car he would lose the figure. So he chased it down the street on foot, ignoring the pain on his bare feet as he flew across gravel and stone and glass. The figure ran still, and as Alex realised there was something a little familiar about it they vanished sideways.

Alex tried to corner, but the human body is not built for such sudden turns and he tumbled over, scraping his arm on the pavement. His howl of pain echoed down the street, and he pulled himself up in time to see the figure stop, turning to him. A shudder ran down his spine as he watched the masked head  _tilt_ , slowly, to stare at him, and as he began to run again it simply – vanished. Faded into the dark like a ghost.

He walked forward, conscious now that he was entering the territory of something  _bigger_  than he was – not physically, but in all other senses a lot, lot larger than Alexander Randal Kralie could ever hope to be. He trained the camera on what loosely passed for a piece of children's play equipment, rusted and faded from its original cheery yellow, wishing that he had gone for the night vision – the streetlights by the park were not casting much light on the situation, no pun intended, and he could not shake the feeling he was not alone.

" _Come out_!" he shouted, voice trembling, and walked to the seesaws. They were both touching the ground on the same side, and as he went to touch one there was a squeak from the swings. He marched over, stomach now seriously pained with anxiety, and as he watched them swing wildly, almost feeling the  _absence_ of the wind that should have been blowing them.

Then he  _felt_  someone go passed him, and turned around, sprinting to the seesaws. One side was down, forming an X that seemed paradoxically threatening in its innocuousness. It was a child's toy, for Christ's sake. It was just-

He turned, and time slowed down as he saw, fear blossoming in his gut like pain from a gunshot, the tall man slide past him. It couldn't have been more than a second, maybe two, but to Alex it lasted a lifetime.

His legs, obviously on the ball where his brain wasn't, chased the figure, feet pounding against the earth for a second before his eyes managed to file the report the figure had vanished. He swung the camera about, mouth hanging open, before his fear suddenly converted into rage.

" _Where the fuck are you_?!" he shouted, and then swung the camera around again, taking in the entire park that now sat, peaceful, in the dark of the night.

* * *

Sarah opened her eyes, and heard something scrape against the window.

Fear gripped her, not the rational fear of it being a murderer or other unwanted intruder, but a childish fear that seemed to come from somewhere around her knees. She nuzzled under her covers, reaching out for her one stuffed toy, a dog, and held it to her, face buried into its fur.

Down the hall, she could hear as her parents' bedroom door creaked open, feet padding along the corridor towards the bathroom. She exhaled slowly, feeling tremors up and down her spine, and shook her head. She did not want to go back to filming tomorrow, she realised. There was something about the group now that she did not want to mention – as if there was a shadow hanging over them all that had grown in the past week. She had met up with Brian once – just once. They had watched a movie at his place, and both had found that, once the conversation turned to Marble Hornets, they could not focus; shadows in the room made them jump, they kept looking at the windows. Only when the conversation had returned to the movie they were watching had the room cleared of the heaviness that had been summoned.

Now she felt that same heaviness press down on her, and she rolled over to face away from the window, feeling the eyes of someone unseen on the back of her neck. Someone was outside, somebody was watching her…

She opened one brown eye, and looked at her mirror.


	10. Entry 13

Jay awoke to his phone buzzing away merrily under his pillow. He checked the time. 7:04am. He checked the caller ID. Alex.

"Mmmnnh?" he asked, answering the phone, and Alex sounded unusually clipped and strained as he replied.

"Jay, is it okay if we cancel filming and you and me just go location scouting today?"

"Alex, it is 7:00am. Why is this a conversation we are having now?" Jay groaned, and Alex cleared his throat, awaiting an answer. "Sure. Whatever. Can we not leave now?"

"I'll pick you up around lunchtime," Alex said shortly, and hung up without a goodbye, leaving Jay staring at his phone in puzzlement. He shoved it back under his pillow, and buried his face in the soft material.

He felt like shit; he felt how Tim looked, he thought, smiling ruefully to himself, and put a hand to his head. He felt like he had flu – he was cold, all over, and his body ached like he had run a couple of miles before bed last night. He shook his head, and considered calling Tim, asking him what he was taking. It seemed to have fixed  _him_  up for the shoot the next day.

He realised with a sickening feeling that he was not going back to sleep again, and pulled his legs out of the bed, both feeling as if they were full of rocks. He was going to have to call Alex, he realised. Chicken out of filming. But then he'd never find out why Alex was up at 7am – a fairly rare occurrence – and why he sounded so  _weird_.

He made his way downstairs, and found, to his mild irritation, that this time his camera was on the kitchen table. His absent-mindedness was starting to piss him off, and he opened it, wondering what was so interesting in the fridge he had decided to film it.

There was twenty seconds of extra footage that he did not remember filming, and almost all of it was static-y and distorted beyond recognition. However, at the end, there was one frame. That circle with the cross through it that Jay vaguely recognised.

He shook his head, and deleted it.

* * *

Tim woke up slowly. God, he was warm-

Actually, he was uncomfortably so, and he rolled over. Ah, he was fully dressed. That'd explain it. Including, he was interested to note, shoes. Perhaps leaving them next to the bed was working. Unfortunately, this all meant that he had gone out for another run last night, and he felt a little sick as he wondered what he had done.

Lighting a cigarette, he got up, planning to assess the damage to the house before he bothered getting changed or showered. If he had any bodies to bury, he thought wryly, he might as well bury the clothes he'd committed the murder in with them – waste of clothes, otherwise. Including that damned mask-

The mask that now sat atop his counter, smiling knowingly at him as he descended the staircase. He picked it up, and pinged the elastic on the back, sighing as he did so. Damn this stupid thing to hell, but he didn't want to throw it away. Not after he'd just started wearing shoes for his nightly runs.

* * *

Sarah was unusually quiet all morning, to the bewilderment of her parents. She was quiet when she got the phone call from Alex to tell her the filming was off, and she had only marginally cheered up when Brian rang to ask if she, Seth and Tim all wanted to come around to his to watch a film and eat 'the biggest plate of nachos  _Chez Brian_  had ever produced'. His laughter had seemed forced, and so had hers.

By the time Brian had swung around to pick her up, and actually kissed her hand – she was impressed – she was actually smiling. She wasn't prepared to tell anyone about the night's events though, and so when she was met by two other brittle smiles from Tim and Seth, she felt more stressed than ever.

* * *

"Dude, the battery in that is running out," Jay said, and Alex didn't even look at him.

"Yeah, this one's kind of low," he mumbled.

"Do you have the extra one?" Jay tried to coax more speech out of him, and Alex did not look up, still staring at the camera screen.

"No, I think I left it in the car. Uh, can you go get it?" he asked, and now he looked at Jay through the viewfinder of the camera. Jay was a little sick of Alex's shit, to be honest; he had turned up earlier than needed to this godforsaken field that he didn't even know anything about. Why couldn't Seth poke around with Alex? It wasn't like Alex was actually interested in his company – every attempt at conversation had been rebuffed, until finally he had given up. He had asked about the enormous scrape up Alex's arm, and had received a  _Look_  of almost snooty irritation.

"Yeah," he said tersely, and Alex nodded.

"Okay." He began to walk off down the path, and Jay turned back.

"Oh wait," he said, and Alex turned back impatiently. "Where is it?"

"Uh, I think I left it in the passenger seat," Alex said. He was annoyed at Jay today – he had turned up looking like shit, acting like shit, and constantly yammering on about pointless crap that Alex did not have the stomach for today. Not after last night. Jesus, if this was what Jay was like, how would having all the others around have been?

"Okay," Jay said, turning to leave.

"If not, the trunk," Alex called after him, and he looked back.

"Alright," he said, and Alex ground his teeth silently.

"I'm going to keep on going though, so just…" he said, and Jay replied with an offhand 'I'll meet you down there' that made Alex just want to throw the camera at his head. He wanted to say 'no, asshole, I'm going to keep going and hide in a fucking tree'. Fuck, why couldn't Jay just listen for once?

He shook himself; Jay wasn't acting any different from normal. He was just tired, he told himself.

* * *

"What the fuck is with everybody?" Tim asked, and Sarah shrugged.

"I don't know. Did something really bad happen this past week?" she asked, and Seth looked at Brian. Tim nodded, and they all told the story of the tall guy following Seth. Looking around at their expressions, she decided to tell them the story of last night.

She told them about the feeling of dread, the noise at the window.

And then she told them about the mirror.

"-I rolled over, and looked in the mirror, and it reflects the window behind me, you know? And there was a face outside," she said hoarsely, and Brian put an arm around her. Tim leant in.

"What kind of face?" he asked slowly, and she shrugged.

"It was really white. With like, really big black eyes and huge dark lips, like they had makeup on or a mask or something," she said quietly, staring at the floor, and if Tim had been made of weaker stuff he'd probably have given the game away right there. As it was, he managed to contain the horror that grasped his windpipe and squeezed, and his mind whizzed to the mask, which was right now in a suitcase in the bottom of his wardrobe. None of them were going to see it.

"Jesus Christ," Seth mumbled. "I bet that scared you." She nodded, and shook her head.

"But my bedroom is on the second floor," she whispered. "How did it get up there?" Tim, who had been wondering how he'd managed that himself, as he didn't even know where Sarah lived, shook his head.

"Have you got any roofing out there?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"There's a drainpipe that goes past my room, but it's really old. It'll fall straight off if you tried to climb it," she croaked, and then burst into frightened tears. Brian pulled her closer to him, and Seth put his hand on her arm. Tim, for his part, took another drag of his cigarette and tried not to think about the implications of this news.

* * *

Alex had had a pleasant wander up to the field, despite all prior assumptions; he had filmed some very lovely trees that he had noticed, and was now wandering towards the field Seth had shown him, enjoying the peace and quiet.

Until he stubbed his toe on the cement slab at his feet.

He dropped to one knee, wincing and clutching his toe, and as he did so noticed the pattern scratched into the floor. He brushed the leaves from the cement, lifting his camera as he did so, and the pattern revealed was a circle with two lines scratched through it.

It seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't remember where from; and so he stood up, panning his camera across the building.

What had Seth said? Oh yes; this had been changing rooms for the school before the field had been closed off. He panned across the building half-heartedly, and then let the camera swing down to his side as he began to wander across the field. That wasn't why he was here, was it? Not really. He was here because this was where he first saw  _it_. He and Seth, that day, had seen  _something_ , something that had confused them. He was sure it was significant, and as he wandered across the field towards the bleachers, he idly wondered why Jay had gotten to.

He half-assedly swung the camera up to get a shot of the wooden seats, now rotting, grey with age and overgrown, and as he panned round to what looked like an enormous concrete organ he blinked.

It was there.

He made to run, to run at the concrete building, not sure whether he was going to run at the thing or back to Jay. His feet pounded across glass, aching as last night's cuts and bruises rubbed against his sneakers.

He reached the building, and as he looked back he realised it had moved, backing away alongside the building. He slowed down, jogging alongside the building, the adrenaline fighting against the terror of what the thing actually was. He was no longer sure it was somebody playing a prank. What it was – he guessed he was about to find out.

He rounded the corner, filming along the top of the building, and slowed down almost to a walk, turning his head to look behind him. Big mistake.

He almost walked into  _it_ , and as he stopped dead, the camera jolting out of his hand with the momentum's negation, he fell to his knees.

 _Listen_.

* * *

Sarah was asleep on Brian, makeup smudged across her face, as Tim passed Seth a cigarette. Seth had never smoked before, but this was his fourth cigarette and, from the guilt Tim felt, he didn't mind passing them along. Brian for his part was eating a sandwich longer than his forearm, eyes fixed on a horizon possibly not on the plane his body inhabited. The silence had become comfortable, the feeling of safety in numbers almost tangible – until the doorbell went.

Sarah jerked awake with a little scream, Seth stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and acted casual, and Tim and Brian both leapt up, shoulders squared. Tim went to the door, Brian behind him, and as they opened the door to Jay carrying Alex, Brian slumped in relief, Tim shaking his head.

"Jay, man, you scared us sh-" he began, and Jay looked up at him, mouth open in angry shock.

" _I rang your fucking doorbell_!" he snapped, and Tim actually looked at Alex.

The boy was slumped against Jay, eyes half-open and dull, and his jaw hung slack, glasses half-off of his face. Jay barely had hold of him, his legs unsteady and bent as if he were drunk, and as Jay let out a pained groan Tim and Brian lunged forward and grasped Alex before he fell over.

"What the fuck happened?!" Brian asked as they guided Alex to the sofa, and Sarah backed away as far as she could as they dumped the near-unconscious boy next to her.

"I don't know," Jay said adamantly, falling to the other sofa with another pained grunt. He began rubbing one arm, and shook his head. "We were scouting at the field opposite the school, and I had to go back to the car to look for some tapes. When I got back, he was kneeling next to this weird old building coughing his goddamn lungs out." He reached out to Tim, and Tim passed him a cigarette without even having to ask. "Thanks."

"Why have you all started smoking?" Sarah asked quietly, and Jay shook his head.

"What is happening?" he asked, and Brian succeeded in slapping Alex back into consciousness. He looked around groggily, and jumped a little as he realised he was surrounded by five concerned faces.

"Uh… where am I?" he asked, voice thick and slow, and Jay let out a sigh of relief.

"Jesus, man. You had me fucking terrified," he said, voice uneven. "What happened?"

"I… I… the thing," Alex said, and his eyes glazed over. "I saw the thing. The tall guy."

"What did he say? Who is he?" Tim asked sharply, and Alex shook his head, eyes sharpening again.

"It's just a guy from our class," he said slowly. "It's some guy who wanted to prank us. We had a fight. Sorry. I guess…" He raised a hand to his head. "I guess he smacked me pretty good in the head. I blanked out a little. Sorry, Jay." Jay shook his head, the animosity towards his best friend having evaporated.

"Was it the guy in the mask?" Sarah asked timidly, and Alex's head whipped around like a rattlesnake. He stared at her, and then shook his head.

"No, uh… that was one of his stupid-ass freshman friends," he murmured, and Tim's brow furrowed immediately. "I guess now he knows I know who they are, he's going to leave us alone. I hope."

As Jay began to fuss over Alex, promising to get him home, and Seth and Sarah made arrangements to get home, Tim leant against the wall in Brian's front room, glaring at Alex's retreating back. He had lied; Tim could prove it, if he wanted to drive away all his friends at once  _and_  perhaps have the police called. So, what if he had lied about the tall man's identity?

Alex turned his head back, and as their eyes met, Tim realised that Alex knew he knew. He nodded as Jay turned around, and took another drag of his cigarette.

"Tim, man, you crashing here?" Brian asked, and Tim shook his head.

"I've got stuff I need to do," he said, and Alex smirked as he walked out of the door. Just a little, but Tim saw.


	11. Entry 3

Alex had to know.

He was currently fixing a camera to the shelf opposite his kitchen doorway, and every few seconds he would glance around as if expecting someone. He had listened, alright, and he had heard, and now he was going to put it to the test. The Operator had told him things, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to believe them. But he couldn't risk it.

Rocky ran to his ankles, and he reached a hand down to stroke him, not even paying attention.

Tim was the one he had to look out for. He had seen the look Tim had given him when he had left Brian's. That glare. He knew he was lying… but how? But then again, the Operator had  _said_  it was their fault. He thought of Tim's permanently pissed-off expression, and thought about how much Tim would  _enjoy_  siccing destructive forces on other people.

Unless he  _was_  the masked man… but that was unlikely.

He remembered the figure running down the street, and his fingers closed around Rocky's collar, causing the dog to whine.

 _Fuck_! It had been him! Tim had been the Masked Man, trying to lead him to the Operator! He let out a snarl of rage, twisting his hand, and Rocky yelped as the collar tightened.

"Oh god," Alex gasped, and let go, Rocky whimpering and backing away. "Rocky, boy, I'm so sorry."

This was insane.

This was  _insane_.

He had hallucinated a conversation with a nine-foot-tall eldritch abomination in a park, and now he was paranoid that his friends were all in on the act. Tim  _always_  looked pissed-off; he had carried him into the house, hadn't he? Tim wasn't out to get him at all. He, Jay and Brian had been friends since they were all tiny. And Sarah and Seth were nice enough. Surely none of them would… would…

He put a hand to his head, and then reached out to take the camera.

Then he decided to leave it there. He'd leave all the cameras around the house up, just in case. But he was definitely getting a few hours' sleep tonight. He reached out, and Rocky came crawling to him, whimpering as he did so, and Alex sat on the kitchen floor, in the light seeping in from the hallway, and stroked him, breathing strained.

Damn, this was crazy.

* * *

One week later, and Tim sat there, turning the mask over and over in his hands.

"Come on then," he spat, remembering that smirk Alex had left him with. "Come on. You want to take me on a little walk? You take me to Alex's, you show me what that asshole is doing." He had been doing this all week, and it had yielded no tangible results, but he kept trying.

The mask smiled knowingly back at him, and did not answer, in defiance of at least one of the 'Mask' movies. Tim shook his head, and realised how stupid it was that he was talking to the mask. Then again, he reasoned, he had a wad of papers under his bed that explained in detail why this was totally normal for him.

"Come on," he mumbled, and pulled the elastic out, cramming the mask onto his face and tucking the elastic behind his ears. "Let's go."

He felt nothing – no sudden rush of power, no urge to go jogging anywhere. He looked from left to right through the eyeholes. More nothing. Everything was just a bit darker.

He sighed, and hooked his fingers behind his ears to take it o-

* * *

Jay lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, the same thoughts running through his mind as had the night before, and the night before that.

Alex had lied. He knew it, somehow – probably because he had heard his best friend lie a million times before and knew what to expect. Alex had definitely lied… but why?

Was it to protect everyone? he wondered idly as he lay there. Alex might try and do that. But what from? From that… thing? From this mysterious masked man? That just raised more questions than it answered.

And Tim. Tim had given Alex a  _look_ , one of utter disbelief, when he had mentioned the masked man. Tim knew something, he was sure.

He turned his head, idly, and let out a scream of terror when he saw the masked face peering in through the window. It vanished, and he ran, tearing to the door, kicking aside a bundle of paper as he flung it open. He saw the figure haring down the street and made to follow before he realised he had gone to bed in his underwear. He had to think practically – if he caught up to the figure, he'd be fighting  _in his boxers_ , and also if the neighbours saw him running down the street, the explanation was a little weird.

His brain managed to catch up to 'bundle of paper', and he snatched it up, slamming the door shut.

It was mostly newspapers – recent and local, so this was presumably not a calculated move. In the middle of the papers was a photo – a photo of the mask lying in the gazebo in the woods. Jay sat down on his sofa, staring at the picture in shock, and then he turned it over.

'He lies' was scrawled on the back in sharpie marker.


	12. Entry 7

Brian was not happy.

It had been a little over a week and since Alex had had his little 'fight' with the guy from the year – whoever it actually  _was_  – and yet Brian did not feel safe. Everywhere he went, he had felt hunted – watched. It was pathetic, to be scared of some sophomore with a stupid thing for pranks; but Alex wasn't helping. When Brian had tried to ask him who the dick  _was_ , he had been shut down without any kind of explanation, and then when he had asked him when they were next filming Alex had lashed out at him. Verbally, or Brian would have knocked him flat, but still, it hurt.

So now he was somewhat relieved to have gotten a text from Alex saying 'filming today?', even if that was all it said. Alex had asked him to bring his car, and, unless he was planning to ask him to run him to Mexico to escape the police, something Brian was finding easier to believe as time went on, he was okay with this.

He picked Alex up at his house, and then they went to pick up Sarah, deciding to focus on their scenes together. Alex acted friendly and normal on the way, apologising for being so spaced out and aggressive by equal turns, and explained he was shook up. Brian asked again for the guy's name, but Alex deferred, saying that he didn't 'want to start some big fight when they could shut it down by ignoring it', and if it got worse he would call the police, and Brian was content with that.

* * *

Tim woke up, and immediately sat up in bed. He yelped in vague horror, almost fell out of bed, staggered into the bathroom, and rinsed out his eyes, swearing repeatedly. Staring at himself in the mirror, he shook his head, muttering 'no' occasionally, and then rubbed his face with his palms, whimpering. It was no good. He still remembered what Jay looked like in boxer shorts.

But, he reasoned, trying to stop his eyes self-destructing in horror, at least he vaguely remembered something from that night. He had no idea what had happened that had resulted in him speeding from Jay's house leaving Jay in the doorway in his boxers, but he was really, really sure that Jay would have called him by now and left some interesting messages if it hadn't been above board.

He wandered slowly to his kitchen, grabbing his phone on the way, and decided to call Jay. It might look suspicious, he reasoned, but he'd much rather know that he hadn't proposed to him or something. Jay picked up on the first ring.

"Hey," Tim said conversationally, and there was silence. "Uh… Jay?"

"Tim, how soon can you get here?" Jay asked, and Tim knew. He knew. Oh god, he knew. Would he believe him that he honestly had no control of his actions? Would he mind explaining his actions to him first, because he couldn't remember them?

"What's happened, man?" he asked, trying to keep his voice level, and Jay let out a sigh.

"Listen, man, I really think something's happening with Alex."

Tim could actually have melted onto the floor with relief, but he managed to contain his emotions to the point where he arranged to meet up with Jay, and put the phone down. He looked up at where the mask sat on his countertop, and smiled at it.

"At last," he said, and the mask smiled back. "You can fucking deliver."

* * *

"Let's start again," Alex smiled, and Brian pointed at the camera, smiling nervously.

"Let's start again," he agreed, and Alex shut the camera off.

"I'm not being too demanding?" he asked, and it seemed an earnest question.

"No, no, no," Brian said, shaking his head. "No, it's just… kind of stuffy in here…" That was a lie. He felt watched, and as he glanced sideways at Sarah he could see she felt it too. Alex nodded, and raised the camera.

"So I look at you?" he asked, and Alex nodded.

"Yeah, that's fine," he said, and stared at the viewfinder. He felt at ease today. The Operator had lied, he was sure of that now. They had not brought this upon him, why-ever the  _thing_  was following him. "Alright, I'm rolling, and uh, just a second - let me…" He adjusted himself in the seat, and some of Brian's frustration leaked as he rubbed his nose. He turned the camera off. "I'll start again, hang on. Just be quiet."

"What?" Brian asked, and Alex shook his head.

"What did I just say?" he sighed, and resumed filming as Brian gestured into the back with his thumb.

"I thought you were talking to her," he admitted, and Alex shook his head.

"No. Crap," he said, leaning to the dashboard. "I just lost the script…" He opened the door to manoeuvre himself to it, and dropped his keys. He managed to retrieve them after some careful angling, and turned the camera off again. "Just, once more. I swear. Just stay quiet until I'm rolling." He sat up, and resumed filming, praying this was actually it. "And I'm talking to Brian." Brian began to laugh hysterically. "Yeah, don't say anything because the camera picks it up," he said, teasingly, and Sarah grinned at him, glad he was back to normal. "Alright, you ready?"

Brian sighed, and nodded.

"Yeah, are you going to feed me Tim's lines?" he asked, and Alex nodded.

"Uh, yeah, just a second…" He fumbled with the script. "Alright. Action."

"I don't know, this town just doesn't feel the same to me anymore," Brian said with earnestness. "I missed it  _so much_  when I was in college. But now that I'm back, I just feel like a depressed teenager all over again, stuck in a loop of unhappiness." Alex was impressed. Brian actually seemed to be taking this seriously, unlike the others.

"Maybe you've grown up?" he said, and Brian sighed.

"I don't know," he said, sounding defeated. "Maybe this town has grown up."

"Maybe it has," Alex finished, and grinned at Brian. "Alright, good." Brian sighed, leaning back against the seat, and Alex felt nausea and faintness wash over him as he saw it. The Operator. It stood in the alley behind Brian, and it was glaring at him. How he could tell without it having a face, he was unsure, but he could.

"Are we going to do it again?" Brian asked, hoping the answer was no. He still felt watched, and he would much rather just get the hell out of there right now, and take Sarah with him. He watched as Alex stared at the viewfinder, a grim expression on his face, and repeated his question. "Are we?"

"No," Alex said quietly. "We're done." Brian stared at him. Did he know how he felt? Alex dropped the camera to his knee.

"Is that it?" Brian asked, and Alex's head snapped towards him – or, as Brian increasingly felt, something behind him.

"Yeah. We're  _done_ ," he emphasized.

"Okay…" Brian murmured, and as they backed out of the alleyway he saw Sarah's worried expression and smiled at her, not as convincingly as he would have liked to. He looked back, and saw nothing where Alex was staring. Maybe Alex really was going crazy.

* * *

"You think the masked guy left this as a warning?" Tim asked, and Jay nodded. Tim was not impressed with his own thinking. This was cryptic and a little crazy. But it had gotten the job done.

"Alex has been acting a little weird for a while. I mean, ever since the day after you…" He trailed off, and then feebly shrugged. "Uh, you were ill. We couldn't reach him all night, could we?"

"No," Tim said, and shook his head. "But acting a little screwy is no reason to think someone's gone crazy." He narrowed his eyes, and then shook his head. "Uh, you know what I mean."

"I do," Jay said. "But I saw the look  _you_  gave him after he came to." Tim looked at Jay, and Jay stared back, defiant. "You looked at him like you  _knew_  he was lying."

"I…" Tim's mind's wheels whirred as he tried to lie quickly and undetectably. "Fine. I didn't want to accuse him directly. In front of everyone." Jay waited, expectant. "If there was a fight, where were his bruises? If there was a fight, why did the guy explain all that crap about his 'freshman friend'?" He hoped Jay would buy it, and to his relief Jay nodded slowly.

"But I don't know what he'd gain by lying, unless he's trying to sabotage his own film shoot," he sighed. Tim shrugged, and shook his head.

"You're his best friend. Is there any reason he'd do it? If there is, you'd know," he said flatly, and Jay nodded, and then shook his head, and then shrugged.

"No. I don't know," he said, and put his head in his hands. "Oh, man…"

"What do we do?" Tim asked, and Jay looked up, tears streaking his face. "Oh. Uh…"

"He's my best fucking friend and I don't know  _what's wrong with him_ ," Jay whispered hoarsely, and put his head back down. Tim rested his hand on his shoulder awkwardly, and Jay sobbed onto his sleeve. "Fuck. What kind of  _fucking_  friend am I?!"

Tim let him cry a little more, and then Jay sat up, face straight once more, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

"Sorry," he whispered, and shook himself, sounding almost embarrassed.

Tim had never felt more alone in that moment. If only he could let his emotions out like Jay could. Instead, he nodded to Jay, and punched him on the arm.

"We'll find out. Don't worry," he said, but he felt very worried. If he was the one trying to keep Jay's emotions together, this wasn't going to last very long before it all went horribly wrong.

"The first thing we do is talk to Brian, Seth and Sarah. Maybe Jessica and Amy," Jay said, pulling himself back together. "Uh… I don't know. Maybe we can shock something out of him."

He smiled at Tim, and as Tim smiled back, he noticed something that worried him, and worried him on Tim's behalf. When Tim smiled, the humour never reached his eyes. They were worryingly empty.


	13. Entry 9

Jay could smell cigarettes, and as he rolled over on the sofa, he could hear Tim on the phone.

"Sure. No, I'm not busy." He paused, and looked into the living room, where Jay gave him a bleary nod. "Uh, where's Jay?" Jay shook his head violently. If Alex knew they were ganging up on him, he might get defensive and there went their plan. "Uh, no idea. Have you tried his cell?" Jay slumped onto the sofa, and felt the weight of the world crash down onto his shoulders again. "Yeah, I'll see you soon." He hung up, and shrugged at Jay. "He wants us to do the 'gazebo scene'. Whatever that is."

"Your big confrontation with Sarah," Jay said, going through the scene from memory. "Uh… you basically ask about her feelings for Brian." Tim smiled – again, the smile not quite reaching his eyes – and looked around.

"Uh… there is food. Around. Somewhere." He shook his head. "I just got a text off of Brian, telling me he's coming round, so expect…" There was a knock on the door, and he nodded. "Him."

Jay opened the door, and Brian looked surprised to see him, before just looking tired. Jay ushered him in, and he slumped onto the floor, back resting against the sofa.

"I can't. I can't fucking do this anymore," he said weakly.

"Jay, stay here with Brian. I have to get to Rosswood," Tim said, grabbing his coat. Jay looked at it, and in the back of his mind wheels began turning. That coat was familiar… "See you." His train of thought was broken, and he turned to Brian, who shook his head.

"What happened?" he asked.

* * *

Tim sat in the gazebo, trying to ignore the fact that last time he had been here, a mask had been lying in the mud, a mask that now haunted the dreams of his friends, and Alex. He looked at Sarah, who seemed extra-nervous now that Brian wasn't here, and Seth smiled apprehensively at the two of them.

"I'm sorry about Poppy," Sarah said quietly, and they both looked at the tiny Chihuahua that sat, tongue out like a tiny slice of ham, on the floor of the gazebo.

"No sweat," Tim said evenly, and he knew it wasn't meant for him, or indeed Seth. Alex was too wrapped up in trying to contact Jay to absorb their conversation, but Tim still did not want to risk his hearing.

"She's cute," Seth said, and bent down to stroke the dog. It yelped, and then licked his fingers, yapping again. He smiled, and then Alex stormed over, looking mildly irritated.

"Are we ready to go?" he asked, and there was general consensus that everybody was ready. "Okay. Go from 'Are you sure?'. Okay?"

"Okay," Tim said, and Seth began filming. "Are you sure?" he began, and Sarah spread her fingers, shrugging. "I've never seen him happier than when he looks at you… but he seems really distant ever since he came back, you know?"

Sarah spread her hands again. "And?"

"I mean, have you talked to him at all?" Tim asked, and he could almost hear Alex's fuse getting shorter. This was not acting – they might as well have been chatting in the college cafeteria. He wondered idly if irritating Alex might get something out of him.

"No," Sarah said. She was playing with her nails, out of boredom or anxiety.

"Well, uh…did he come back because of you? Because he never told me why he was here," Tim said, and gesticulated for Sarah to reply.

"Doesn't really matter, does it? He left me when he went off to the city and that's that," Sarah said, and Tim could hear the undercurrent of anxiety in her voice now. She would be on his and Jay's side, he could tell. Seth didn't seem the type to take sides.

"Yeah, yeah. I guess you're right," Tim said, and felt his hand going for a cigarette. He needed one right now, and he guessed Alex would just have to write his character as a smoker, because he wasn't going to stop now. "So, I mean, what's… what's…what's the plan now for you? What's next?" He took out a cigarette and put it to his mouth, feeling Alex's eyes on him.

"I'm not really going to do anything," Sarah sighed, and Tim made up his mind to ask her to talk to Alex. He might take it better coming from a girl. He lit his cigarette.

"We're going to do it again." Alex sounded kind of snippy, and Sarah and Tim looked at him. Tim slumped his shoulders in exasperation. He just wanted to get this over with and talk to Sarah. "The pacing still feels weird, it's…it doesn't sound like a conversation." He marched onscreen. "You guys still sound like you're reading off'f the script." He clenched his fists, trying to maintain composure. "Let's just… just have a conversation. Let's do it again!"

"Still? Still! Eight takes. Still," Tim mumbled to Sarah, and she rolled her eyes. Alex would happily have punched Tim in the face at that moment, but he still kept his cool. Tim relit his cigarette, and took a drag. "Can we go yet?" he said.

"Action," Alex said, and his face became thunder as a child laughing in the background. "Well, no. No we can't. Just a second." An image of him slapping the child flew across his mind, and he suddenly felt shock filter through him. That was… that was  _horrible_. Some kids were messing around, having fun in the park, and… the image was replaced by him punching Tim in the face. That was better.

"Well, yeah. That's… wonderful," Tim snarked, taking a drag of his cigarette, and Sarah nodded, leaning towards him. Alex almost wanted to take a picture of this. Ask Brian how he felt about his perfect little princess being all pally with someone who had more sideburns than personality.

"That's what happens when you plan on a public place," Sarah sighed, and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Good thing I didn't have anything to do later today," Tim added, and Sarah nodded, turning away from Alex. They were doing this on  _purpose_ , he realised, and felt an awful shock in his stomach. The Operator had  _said_. He had  _said_  they picked him because he was least likely to resist. He was a pushover.

"Yeah, I know. Twelve-to-one. Yeah, right-" Sarah scoffed, and Alex felt rage heat his entire body from the inside.

"Why would you have anything to do anyway? You knew you were coming on set. You knew this could take a while. And obviously it is," he snapped, interrupting her, and Tim defended her.

"Yeah, it was supposed to be an afternoon shoot though," he cut through Alex's complaint, and Alex sighed, trying to contain his ire once more. No, the Operator was  _wrong_ , his 'friends' hadn't set him up for this, he-

"If you guys would do it right the first time, we wouldn't have to-" he began, and was forced to bite his tongue, tasting blood, as Tim interrupted again.

"It was an afternoon shoot, I didn't even buy lunch," he said, and Sarah saw something in Alex's eyes that horrified her. It was as if all the humanity in them left suddenly, and they were cold as ice.

""Let's just do it again! Let's just do it again," she cut in, and Alex joined her.

"Let's just do it again. Just stop," he said, and the threat, although light in his voice, still carried enough for Tim to realise it was sensible to shut up.

"Alright," he muttered, and took another drag of his cigarette.

"Action," Alex snapped, and Tim sighed deeply.

"He seems really distant ever since he came back, you know-" he began.

"Cut!" Alex barked, and Tim's hands involuntarily hooked into claws. "From the  _beginning_ …"

* * *

"I don't give a damn," Brian murmured to Jay, the two of them perched on Jay's sofa. "I don't give a fuck if he punched fifty shades of crap out of this creep before he landed the 'lucky hit' on him. This guy is still following me." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and began to flick through his pictures. In all of them, a tall figure was visible at the end of Brian's yard.

"Damn," Jay sighed, and took the phone. The figure seemed –  _different_  to the rest of the picture, overlaid with static as if he had been superimposed – but he had the feeling that Brian wasn't lying. Brian had related the story of what had happened in the alleyway, and his earnestness was chilling.

Jay told Brian about his and Tim's discussion, and Brian agreed that there was something very wrong with Alex, and they needed to discuss this with him. They also discussed the masked man, the one that Brian had yet to see.

"I think Tim knows more than he's telling us," Jay confided. "But, since he believes me about Alex, I'm not exactly about to ruin that and risk having him go tell Alex everything by confronting him."

"Save that for if something bad happens. For all we know, the masked man is friendly. Although if he ever looks through Sarah's window at night again, I'll break his legs," Brian said, and Jay laughed, and then sobered up again as clouds drew across the sky.

"I wonder how they're doing," he mumbled.

* * *

"Rolling," Seth said, and Alex actually snapped the pencil he was holding.

"What?! Roll-" He stormed over, and in that moment of distraction Sarah leant in to Tim, eyes pleading.

"I need to talk to you, afterwards," she whispered, and Tim nodded, careful to keep his body language casual. He wasn't sure what Alex was mixed up in; the occult, the insane, drugs, whatever – the guy was almost literally frothing at the moment now. He told her to get a lift home with him afterwards, and then Alex's rage became too loud to ignore.

"Did you not have it recording during the break?" he was fuming at Seth, who now looked as if he was desperately trying to fight the urge to run away. "I told you to keep the camera recording at  _all times_. Oh… how long was it off?"

"I… forgot for a second," Seth stammered, and Alex's knuckles went white around the shattered pencil.

"You forgot. I…I gave you one job. All you were supposed to do was come in here, set up the camera, make sure it doesn't fall over, and press record ONCE. You don't stop it at all. I made this extremely clear!" he snarled, and realised that Tim and Sarah were staring at him. This did not help.

"Is this…hey, is this going to be on for a while? Can I get a script again?" Sarah asked quietly, trying to diffuse the tension. Alex nodded tersely, and directed his rage at Seth again, motioning furiously for him to get her a script.

""Just saving time on the tapes," Seth said, defensively, hurrying over to Sarah, and Alex squared his shoulders, storming over.

"Savi….you helped me load up the car!" he snapped. You know how many tapes we have. If we run out of time on this tape," Alex waved at the camera, "we'll get another. It's not a problem. I mean, how clear do I have to make it before you listen?" The Operator was nearby. He could feel it. It was watching his humiliation at the hands of his friends, and  _laughing_. He ushered Seth offscreen, and in the process nearly tripped over Poppy, who had been lying there quietly since he had snapped at her earlier.

Tim saw the little lights go off in Alex's eyes again, and braced himself.

"I mean…get off…You brought your dog!? How many…how many-" Alex roared, and Sarah interrupted.

"Calm down!" she snapped, and he glared at her, eyes black as holes into hell.

"Memorise your lines," he snapped.

"It was just a mistake!" she continued, and Alex took a step forward. Tim decided to push him further – if he got an actual reaction, it would all be caught on tape. It would be better than the agonising wait.

"Memorise your lines," Alex said, voice now full of dark sarcasm. "Maybe we'll get through this a little bit  _faster_."

"Memorize your lines, just don't… just don't read them right off the page," Tim snarked, and Alex felt humbled. The Operator had been  _right_. None of them liked him. They were just the types to sell him out to the Operator to save their own asses.

"Oh, okay," Sarah said sarcastically in reply, and Alex decided that, if it came to it, she would be at least second. He would off her second. Or maybe third, behind Brian.

"You gotta be a little more… human with it, don't be so…" Tim continued, and Alex stared at him almost meditatively. Tim, that bastard, would be first.

"Because I've had the script in every scene," Sarah added, and Tim snorted.

"Exactly," he said, and as he looked Alex in the eyes again he saw that the cold inhumanness had not left. But Alex gave him a tight little smile, and then tilted his head.

"Yeah, you know, act. How 'bout that?" he said, and Tim saw, too late, what was going to happen. Alex knew what he was doing, trying to goad it out of him, and was going to play the same game back. Well, he was going to go down fighting.

"Oh yeah yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's real nice. You know, considering how much you're paying us and everything," he snapped.

"Why would I pay you for what you're giving me? I mean, really?" Alex replied, crossing his arms, and Sarah glared at him.

"Oh, that's… yeah, that's real nice," Tim replied, and Sarah folded her arms.

"Who else is going to work with you with this attitude?" she asked, and the little voice of rationality that still lived at the back of Alex's mind decided to wake up and clock in. Was it his attitude or theirs? Was he really acting weird? He was only acting weird because they were being assholes…

Tim saw the warmth flood back into Alex's eyes, and his brow furrowed.

"Look, I'm sorry," Alex said, exhaling deeply, and Tim suddenly had all of his plans thrown into confusion. Was it possible Alex was just under pressure? That smirk had told him otherwise, but now, Alex just looked tired and confused and slightly terrified, and really, wasn't that how everyone felt?

"Yeah, you spent so much money on tapes you can't afford actors anyway," he said, but not spitefully; more to get the last word in, and Alex looked at him, now simply pained and confused.

"Let's just get it done with, alright? Let's just get it done. I'm sorry, just don't stop recording," Alex said, almost pleadingly, to Seth. "It's not a problem. Plenty of tapes."

"Okay, fine. Sorry," Seth said, apologetically.

* * *

Jay and Brian looked up as Tim and Sarah came through the door, both looking tired and slightly defeated.

"I don't know what the fuck is up with him, man," Tim said to Jay. "At first he seemed like he was fucking crazy, but at the end, I don't know. It was like he had a revelation or something." He collapsed onto the sofa, and between them he and Sarah related the day's events.

"He's definitely hiding something," Sarah murmured. "Do you think he's on drugs?"

"Is he selling them? Has he gotten in trouble with, the police? Or drug dealers?" Brian asked earnestly. "Maybe the masked guy is like, someone who they've hired to kill him!"

"Then why is he looking in  _my_  window?" Sarah asked, looking horrified, and Tim put a hand out before everyone went too crazy.

"Guys," he said. "Let's not get carried away. Maybe this is like, a test. Maybe this is something he's filming, and this is going to be the real film, and he just wants to get realistic reactions or something."

"He's making a student movie about a bunch of teens making a student movie? Who does that?" Brian asked, and Jay shrugged, looking at Tim, who shook his head.

"Have we tried just… talking to him?" Sarah asked, and everyone looked at her. She shook her head. "Someone who isn't me."

"Okay. If he hasn't improved in a few days, we talk to him. For now, let's just… wait and see. You never know. It could just be the stress of actually directing us assholes around," Brian laughed awkwardly.


	14. Entry 8

Alex was drawing.

He had not drawn since sometime in third grade, he estimated – nothing serious, anyway. He had occasionally scribbled on things, like anyone does.

The drawings wallpapered his house.

Paper littered his bedroom floor, trailing outside. Sheaves and sheaves of it, stuck on doors, walls, windows, even the ceiling where he could reach. He wasn't sure what he trying to do – whether it was a message to The Operator or whether it was a message to him. Images filled his mind – swirls and circles and trees.

The camera watched him with blank, all-seeing eyes.

It had to be a message to him, he thought as his fingers danced feverishly over the paper, charcoal rough and smooth in alternation beneath his skin. He had ignored his messages, and now he was going to draw until he went made.

_FORGET WHAT I SEE_

He stared at the paper, and then leapt up, seizing the camera. Seeing was no longer believing. He saw the guys offer to help him, but in his heart he knew it was not real. They were the enemy. Or was he the enemy?

His head swam as a high-pitched whine emanated from the camera. Oh god, the Operator was nearby. He was watching, and Alex hated him for a moment. Why couldn't he just have taken them?

 _Listen_.

_FORGET WHAT I SEE  
_

_HELP_

It needed his help, to take the others in his place. He knew the answers, he realised. He needed to listen, not to see. He ran to the lamp, and turned it out.

The answers would come in the darkness.

* * *

Tim, Seth and Jay slept on Brian's floor. More accurately, Tim slept, breathing soft and slightly rumbling, and Seth slept, snores high-pitched and uneven. Jay lay there, staring at the ceiling. His guilt, the fact that he suspected Alex and not even his friendship with him allayed the fact that he suspected him, even after Tim and Sarah had sworn to seeing him nearly break down at the end of the shoot, filled every vein with, apparently, lead, weighting him to the floor until every lump of the air-mattress, every fibre of the pillow, every thread of his clothes felt irritating and uncomfortable against his skin.

He sat up, and slid out of the sleeping bag. He could hear no noise – nothing from Brian's room, where Sarah and Brian had chosen to sleep – good on them – nothing from the kitchen, nothing from the-

There was a noise at the front door.

He stood up, and crept to the front door, looking out into the street. Nothing. No masked men, no nine foot tall creepy guys in costumes – nothing.

He turned back, and shook his head.

He really was getting paranoid.

* * *

Alex lay in the middle of the floor, staring up at the pictures tacked to his ceiling. His eyes had adjusted to the dark. He had the feeling that was going to be a side effect that stayed with him for a long time.

_you should have listened_

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and there was silence. "Oh god."

_there will be_

_a consequence_

_for your ignorance_

He closed his eyes, and swallowed nervously.

_but if you_

_give them all to me_

_all of them_

Alex stared up at the ceiling once more, and one picture stood out. It was a scribble of a human, drawn as if they were walking away, and beside it he had scrawled 'Jay' until the charcoal had been reduced to dust.

_this ends_

He stared up at the picture. Jay – Jay had been his best friend through everything, since they were tiny. He had stuck by him through fights, breakups, tears, trials and tribulations.

_do we have a deal_


	15. Entry 1

Alex paced up and down his hallway, filming the windows. Occasionally, he would stop dead, eyes wide, and then he would resume pacing. Anyone watching would think he was crazy.

He walked to the lamp, turning it back on, and jumped as it turned straight off again.

_FORGET WHAT I SEE_

He shivered.

What would the consequence be, he wondered? Would it be against him, physically? Mentally? Would it be against someone he knew? He shivered, and looked outside.

Nothing.

Yet.

He paced faster, legs burning. He had been doing this for six hours. It was 4am. But he didn't feel tired. He was running on adrenaline and cheap coffee, which he supposed was better than sleeping and waking up to find – whatever.

There was a click as something knocked on his front door, and he screamed.

* * *

Jay was finally asleep. The house of Brian was near-silent, gentle breathing the only sign that the place was even inhabited. There was nothing to disturb anyone's rest, but something did.

Tim sat bolt upright, breath rasping and choking in his throat, and he cast around for his medicine. Oh god, had he forgotten to take it? Oh man, oh  _man_ …

He tried to get up quietly, feeling dizzy and nauseous, and found his jacket, pulling out the pockets until finally he found the bottle. He opened the cap, tipping two of the bitter pills into his mouth, and then tiptoed into the kitchen, trying not to wretch as the effervescent tablets fizzed their dry, sour taste onto his tongue.

He took a gulp from the tap, and as he straightened up he saw Brian stood in the doorway, watching him.

"You still sick?" Brian asked quietly, and Tim nodded, shoving the pills into his pocket. "Because you've not been coughing, or anything like that."

"I get – headaches," Tim said, awkwardly. It wasn't actually a lie.

"You know something that Jay, Seth, Sarah and I don't. I think it's about the masked man, but I'm not sure," Brian said, voice still quiet. "Jay doesn't want to talk about it, because he trusts you, but I don't. I've known you longer."

"Brian, believe me, if I knew anything that'd help us in this situation-" Tim said, and Brian nodded.

"That's why I'm not going to make you tell me everything." Tim privately rolled on the floor laughing about Brian's chances of physically forcing him to do anything, and his masked other half agreed. "But I want you to know, I'm watching you. If you turn out to be connected to this guy…" He shook his head.

"I'm on your side," Tim said, a little more forcefully than he meant to, and they looked at each other. "Man, this is fucking ridiculous. We're so wound up about something that really isn't  _anything_."

Sarah screamed from Brian's room.

* * *

Alex crept to the window, breathing uneven and shallow. He peered out of the window, and as he tilted the camera to point at his front door, the figure outside on the porch swivelled its head to look at him. He clapped a hand to his mouth, and backed away.

_hello alex_

He ran backwards, smashing into the lamp, and tumbled into his room, slamming the door shut. Rocky gave a howl in the kitchen, and Alex did something he had not done since he was four years old on Halloween.

He leapt into his bed and he pulled his covers over his head.

He lay there, in the dark space under his covers, listening as rain began to patter down outside and Rocky continued to whine downstairs. There was silence, otherwise, and-

_why are you_

_hiding_

The covers were seized by unseen hands, and Alex rammed the pillow over his head, squeezing his eyes shut tightly as the cover was slowly pulled down.

_it must be_

_dark_

_under there_

He heard as paper rustled, and a picture was laid gently on his hand.

_i need these_


	16. Entry 6

Alex raced downstairs, heart pounding. His covers had been ripped up, but he hadn't heard any tearing and it had been microseconds after he had gotten up.

Rocky came bounding out of the kitchen and he ignored him, sprinting to the front door and then to the window beside it. The driveway seemed empty, besides his car, and as he looked left to right. Maybe he had imagined it.

_hello again_

He turned to his left and watched as the Operator slid towards him, and he ran. Like an idiot, he ran, stumbling backwards as the figure slid past the window and then the door.

_you can't run_

_brave to try_

_but you can't_

He stumbled backwards, spine pressing against the kitchen door, and his breath rasped in his chest as he heard a noise from behind him. Forgetting about Rocky – forgetting, in fact, about everything other than getting away – he ran back to his room, and, pulling out a bag, began to shove things in.

He had had a crazy idea – the camera seemed to slow down the Operator, it seemed to move at a normal pace when captured by the camera. Maybe he could bargain with it whilst it was slowed down. Maybe it would simply be useful to know where it was. Maybe he could attack it.

_i can hear you alex_

He didn't care, either way.

* * *

Tim and Brian got stuck in the door as they rushed in to help Sarah. It was a little like a very bad Two Ronnie's sketch, if the Two Ronnie's had both been holding makeshift weapons and wearing matching expressions of terror.

Sarah was up against the window, staring outside in horror, and as they ran to look outside Brian clapped a hand over his mouth.

There was paper lying all over the garden. Big sheets, small sheets, some plain, but most covered in bizarre scribbles. It was arranged in the shape of an enormous circle, with a cross through it, and in the middle of it was the corpse of Poppy.

Ten minutes later, Jay summarily awoken and the paper collected, and they were leafing through them. The dog's body had been covered over with a sheet, Sarah kept inside in the kitchen. She hadn't cried in particular. Everybody knew now that something was exceptionally wrong, and a dog's life paled in comparison to their own.

"This is Alex's handwriting," Jay mumbled, but nobody needed telling at that point. It had officially gone beyond slight oddness. This was horrifying, this was psychopath behaviour. This was very un-Alex.

The paper was covered in drawings of forests, trees, buildings, men with no faces, blood, murder, and a shoeprint, although Tim owned up to treading on that one. The most disturbing point was when Brian turned one over and found out that, when arranged in the enormous circle-with-cross symbol, some of the pieces had scrawled messages on the back that spelt out 'coming for you'.

"Alex has gone  _batshit_ ," Brian gasped, and Tim took a drag of the third cigarette of the process, nodding. He looked haunted, but so did everyone else. "It must've taken him ages to-"

"It wasn't Alex," Sarah murmured. "It was that tall…  _thing_." She looked around, and nodded. "I saw it. It put Poppy on the ground and then it just-" she gave a shudder and clutched onto Brian's hand. "-vanished."

"It's just a guy, right?" Brian said, weakly, and shook his head. "It's some  _guy in a costume_! Like the masked guy!" He looked around, and everyone looked back. "We're not believing in ghosts or something, are we?"

"We've all seen it in really weird places, and it… it's been screwing with tapes and stuff," Jay said, and told them all about his camera being moved about and the odd footage. "If this masked guy can fly, I think we can all assume this tall thing is something weirder. And vicious."

"Bullshit. You're all as crazy as Alex," Brian snapped, and stood up. "It's 5.30 in the morning, and someone snuck onto my property to make some kind of collage, and you're all treating it like it's the Blair Witch project!"

"Whoa, says the guy who took pictures of the tall guy on his phone and acted like he'd taken pictures of Jesus taking his morning walk," Jay retorted, and the group began an argument that was only broken up by Sarah screaming.

"What?!" Tim asked, and she shook her head.

"You were all shouting and I wanted you to stop," she said quietly. "Now, what are we going to  _do_?"


	17. Entry 10

Alex stood over his bed. It was five, half an hour before the others would find the pictures the Operator had laid out for them, and he was preparing to get out of the house. He knew he could not avoid the Operator forever, but he had to find a quiet space to think.

Maybe he could call Jay. Surely the Operator could not be mad at him for trying to get the others back onside? It'd make it easier, when-

_this is_

_a fun game, alex_

_how does it feel_

_to play alone_

Maybe it could.

He dashed out of the room, and seized his camera as Rocky gave a howl from the kitchen where Alex had barricaded him. He grabbed his camera and ran outside.

How it could be so dark at five in the morning was beyond Alex – surely, even though it was almost winter, sunset still wasn't  _that_  far away? But it was pitch-black, and he was thankful for his car headlights as he drove – where?

The looming treeline before him explained it all.

Rosswood Park.

He knew where he had to go. He had to get to that goddamned building next to the baseball field, there was something about it that pulled him there. Maybe he would find something that helped him either get rid of the creature or get rid of the others.

He pulled up, wishing he had stopped opposite the school – he only had a very vague idea where to go from here – and sprinted as soon as the car door slammed shut, not even bothering to lock it. The trees made it even darker, as he ran, breath panting, heart-pounding, along the trail. His flashlight barely lit the trail three feet ahead of him, and he kept expecting to see the Operator pop up before him.

_i like hide and seek_

Alex stopped, and scanned the treeline ahead of him. His torch struck upon a suit and tie, and he ran again, heart threatening to burst out of his t-shirt.

 _am I 'it_ '

He almost ran  _into_  the building, he was that intent on getting away. Something, something here, where he and Seth had been all those weeks and weeks ago. If he found it, it would leave him alone.

_if you find it_

_coming ready or not_

He scanned the edge of the grass, light flickering along the edge of the concrete path. Anything, anything out of place. It would prefer the souls of his friends, and he would prefer it got them… but it was prepared to take him as a consolation prize. How stupid of him to have forgotten that.

His flashlight hit upon a tiny square of photograph paper, and he picked it up, eyes flickering over it.

It was Tim, sat in what looked like a bedroom, eyes heavy, face haggard – and he was placing the mask onto his face.  _The_  mask.

_found you_

Alex looked up, and his flashlight hit upon the Operator.

_listen_


	18. Entry 11

The next morning, Jay had just gotten home, almost sick of the entire ordeal, when Alex arrived at the door. He almost slammed the door in his face out of terror, when Alex sniffled.

"I need help," he said, weakly, and collapsed.

Jay dragged him in, got him sat on the sofa, and Alex pulled out his camera.

"I… I filmed this. Last night," he said, and showed him film camera footage.

It showed the camera facing Alex's bed – Jay's mind rang with alarm bells as he noted the drawings behind the bed – and then, Alex, sitting up as if alarmed by something. The camera was seized, and Jay recognised the living room of Alex's house, and then, as Alex looked out of the window, and retreated, Alex's dinette.

"Alex," he began, and Alex shushed him.

"Look. As I come out of the dinette," he mumbled, and Jay slapped a hand to his mouth as he saw the tall figure standing there, in Alex's house. But, if it was there, how had it been in Brian's garden? "Jay… I'm… I'm sorry," Alex whispered, and broke down, shoulders heaving, knees drawn up to his chest. "I can't. I can't explain it. I'm scared."

"Alex, it's okay," Jay said quietly, and told him about last night's encounter at Brian's house. He was just intensely relieved. His best friend hadn't gone insane. He had been stressed, and thought himself alone. Well, he wasn't.

"And you say Sarah saw it?" Alex asked, sounding relieved. Inside, he was fuming. They banded together without including him, and didn't even bother to  _hide_  it.

"Yeah. So, whatever it is, either there's two of them, or it's very, very fast," Jay confirmed. "Man, I thought you'd gone crazy." He reached over and hugged Alex, who hugged him back.

* * *

"I don't know what Alex has done," Tim snapped, "but now it's coming after us." He waved the paper at Seth, who nodded.

"But what can we do?" he asked quietly. Brian had insisted that the others were taking this far too seriously, and had booted everyone but Sarah out at seven a.m. Tim and Seth were now sat in front of the first place that did coffee, drinking their way to a caffeine overdose.

"I'm all for going and stamping all over Alex's head until he tells us what's going on," Tim said reflectively, and Seth winced a little. "Well, you know. Gently."

"How do you gently stand on Alex's head?" Seth asked, and Tim grabbed his arm.

"Tango at 1 o'clock," he hissed, and Jay and Alex sat with them. Tim stared at Alex in apprehension, and the boy smiled at everyone, looking almost horrifically fragile.

"I'm… so sorry," he sighed, and told them the story. How he had been offered the chance to kill them all for his own reward – and how he had turned it down.

"This isn't anything… human," he finished, and Seth and Tim looked at him in unremitting horror. "It's coming for us all." He showed them the video footage of it in his house, and as he explained his side of the story, Seth nodded.

"So how do we get rid of it?" Seth asked, and Alex leant in.

"We have to act normal. If we act normally, pretend we're carrying on with the shoot, it's going to come for us. It'll be a time when we're all together," he continued. "Plus, if we get this project done, you know, it kind of means that after all this is over we don't get thrown out of university."

"Man has a point," Seth nodded, and they planned to meet up at Tim's the following night to plan the music and possibly set a trap for the creature. Jay and Alex left, Tim watching as the stress flew from Jay's shoulders as he left with his best friend, and Seth smiled at him.

"Jesus, I'm glad Alex wasn't going crazy," he said, and Tim removed the cigarette from his mouth.

"You're all really fucking stupid," he said, to nobody in particular, and watched as Alex turned back... with a smirk.


	19. Entry 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: animal death.

Of course, there was the small matter of… the consequences.

Alex was asleep. His breathing was slow, even, gentle – he did not snore. He lay there, beautiful and fragile in his defencelessness, no cover, glasses on the table so that, should he awaken, he would be blind. The entity stood over him for a moment, drinking his sheer vulnerability in for a moment, before there was a growl from across the room and its head turned, seeing Rocky lying on his bed.

_be quiet_

_dog_

Rocky was a dog, and therefore not too capable of intellectual thought. However, he knew that this thing was a Bad Thing, and it smelt like it wanted to hurt Rocky's master. Rocky also knew that he was a Big Scary Dog. So he got to his feet and snarled.

_goodnight_

One second – technically, 1.63 – passed between that growl and the horrible second when Alex woke up being crushed by a –  _literally –_  dead weight. He pushed it off of himself, and found his fingers sinking into warm fur as the corpse formerly known as Rocky fell off of him. His face and hair were wet, and as he stared in bewilderment at the cooling chunk of meat, he found he was covered in the dog's blood. It trickled down his face where it had trickled out of one of the hundreds of tiny lacerations that covered the animal. He seized the camera, and ran downstairs as the footage showing the Operator played before him, checking every door and window, tears that just would not come building up behind his eyes. It had hurt something, it had killed his Rocky and showered him in the blood. This was what happened when he ignored it. He would not ignore it again. He sat on his sofa, and just stared at the camera, barely knowing if it was filming or not. He stared at the front door, and then, as his fingers changed the tape with robotic precision, he began to sob like a child.


	20. Entry 55

Tim was not comfortable with this at all. This was going to end very, very badly, and he knew it. But he had to know. He had to test Alex, in a way he wasn't entirely sure he was going to come out of completely whole.

He caught up with him as they walked down the road towards that day's filming location, and put on his best 'helpful' expression.

"Hey Alex, the other day when you were talking about needing…uh, abandoned locations for Brian's school, like, in the movie, did you ever find anything?" he asked casually.

"Not yet. Um, the only places that were on here that are abandoned-looking aren't going to let us shoot, so the pickings are kind of slim," Alex responded, offhand.

"Okay, well the reason I asked was because there's like this old… burnt out hospital-looking kind of place back where I used to live," Tim said. It wasn't technically a lie. He  _had_  lived there. "Um…that might pass as a school. Uh, if you want to check it out, we can, but it's kind of far away."

"Well, does it look like a hospital, or do you really think that it could?" Alex asked sharply, and Tim shrugged.

"Well I think that it could pass as a school," Tim said. He had no idea what it looked like now. Last time he'd seen it, it'd been on fire.

"Okay. Well, I haven't found anything here. How far away is 'kind of far away?'"

"Uhh, pff…" Tim said, trying to remember details. He hadn't assumed Alex would fall for it. "Far enough that we'll probably need to split gas money."

"Fair enough. Like I said, since I haven't found anything, I'm willing to give it a shot," Alex said thoughtfully. "Can you do Friday? I'm free… all day."

"I actually have a doctor's appointment at, like 2," Tim said, voice level. "But if you can do Saturday, that would be better. We kind of have to make a weekend out of it anyway."

"I can do Saturday. Uhh, Brian, since you're going to have to be there anyway, can you do Saturday too?" Alex turned to ask Brian, who nodded unenthusiastically.

"Yeah, I think so," he said.

"Ok, well, let's shoot for Saturday then, and we'll give it a look," Alex said, and Tim nodded.

"Okay, sounds good to me," he said, and as Alex strode ahead, Brian fell behind.

"What are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed?" he hissed, and Tim shook his head. "Oh, so we're going out to an abandoned hospital with somebody who could be controlled by a ghost?"

"Thought you didn't believe in ghosts," Tim said indifferently, and fished his cigarettes out of his pocket.

"You're going to die if you don't quit," Brian snapped, and Tim nodded.

"My grandmother lived to be ninety-three," he said, and Brian's brow furrowed.

"Did she smoke?"

"No, she minded her own fucking business," Tim said, and left Brian to think about that one. Now he had Alex, almost alone, somewhere he had the power. He hoped.

* * *

Jay, Sarah and Seth, meanwhile, were in Rosswood Park, crunching their way through leaves and sticks.

"Here," Seth murmured, and motioned to the playing field. They had approached not from the school side, in case Alex had seen them – instead, they had cut through the woods, and now they stood next to the odd concrete-pipe building, looking around.

"What do you think you saw?" Jay asked, and Seth shrugged.

"It was nothing more than a weird flicker. It kind of looked like… when you bring something really close to one eye, so that eye's trying to focus, and then the other one gets all painful and…" He closed his mouth, realising his analogy lacked finesse, and Jay nodded.

"So, we search around here," he decided, and Sarah nodded. She was clutching her little brother's baseball bat, and as she stalked forward, towards the changing rooms, Seth and Jay swapped a glance. She was rising to the challenge.

"Seth, go help her, I'm going to go and check out the bleachers," Jay said, and Seth followed her to the small brick building.

"This door's been locked for donkey's years," he offered, and Sarah ran her hand over the wood, and then kicked at the concrete floor.

"Then why's this all scuffed?" she asked, and Seth looked down. "Someone's opened the door." She looked at the padlock, all rusted, and then stepped back, cocking the cricket bat. Seth winced as she brought it down, and the padlock simply snapped off.

"Power to the people," Jay said, appearing behind them as Sarah pulled open the door. "What's in here?"

* * *

"Uh, all you need to do," Alex was explaining to Brian, "is go stand by, the, uh… that notice sign over there. And just look into the pool, and…" Brian turned his head to look at the sign. "I'm just going to get a shot of you."

Brian turned to walk off, and Tim watched Alex as he filmed him. The boy seemed focused on getting the right shot, nothing else. He glanced into the camera.

_masked man_

He jumped, and heard Alex give a little laugh.

* * *

"Someone's been living here," Jay winced, digging through an empty pile of food wrappers. "Ew."

"The masked man?" Sarah asked, and Jay nodded.

"I'd have thought so." He began to poke through the pile of bedding that was heaped in the corner. "Jesus."

Under the ragged, filthy duvet was a pile of pill bottles, at least a hundred of them. As Jay dropped the blanket, they tumbled down, cascading with little plastic 'plink' noises.

"Shit," Sarah murmured, and picked up a knife that lay, discarded, almost as an afterthought, on the floor. "Look at this."

"That's from my kitchen!" Seth gasped, and snatched it out of her hands, forgetting that rule one of taking knives from other people is 'do not snatch'. He dropped it, wincing. "Ah-"

"Why would they sleep here?" Sarah murmured, as Jay passed Seth a tissue from his pocket. "Is there something important about the woods?"

"I don't know. But I feel we should keep an eye on Alex in his sleep," Seth murmured. "Or… Brian?" Sarah glared at him. "Sorry."

"Brian sleeps fine. Believe me," she said quietly, and Jay nodded. "What about Tim?"

* * *

"Yep, where you're at is fine. Just, uh, lean back like that and turn your head towards the ceiling before you think," Alex said to Brian, who was now kind of bored with this entire thing. He was sure that Alex was back to normal, and was sick of the looks Tim kept shooting him. If Tim wanted to be a paranoid dick about this, it was up to him.

The aforementioned Tim gave a sharp cough, and put a hand to his throat. As Alex went to speak, Tim's phone rang out, and he grabbed for it, incurring an irked look from Alex. Was it Jay? Had something happened? He set the camera down.

"Sorry," he said, more for Brian's sake than Alex's, and answered.

"Let's get a shot anyway," Alex said to Brian, who nodded. So Tim had heard the Operator addressing him? What was  _he_  talking to Tim for? Not that it mattered. This mental hospital sounded perfect, if he could get everyone out there alone… and he almost thought he knew how as well.

"Hello?" Tim asked, and relaxed. Just the latest doctor in a long, long line. He listened with half an ear as they asked about him booking an appointment. "Yep. Friday at two. I'll be there…" The doctor rattled something in his ear, and he nodded. "Just headaches, paranoia, trouble sleeping. I haven't had a full night's sleep in weeks."

Brian's ears pricked. Hadn't had a full night's sleep? Then what was Tim doing with his nights? He was fairly certain he wasn't just sitting there and playing Tetris. And he had a good reason to be paranoid, after all – why was he seeking  _help_? Had he told someone about the tall guy? Alex approached him, asking him to move about a little, and he growled in frustration as Tim was drowned out.

Tim saw Brian's head flick towards him, and realised he was being a little loud for his own good. "Well, I had some history with this kind of thing before, but I'd rather not talk about it over the phone if that's okay. So see you there." He hung up, scooped up the camera, and nodded at the others. "Sorry."

Alex looked, and saw the doubt in Brian's eyes. He would work on him first.


	21. Entry 54

It was not for a few days that La Résistance all met up to discuss their plans, and Tim settled for picking Seth and Jay up from their houses. Alex was not told of this meeting; he was turning up afterwards to meet with Tim and Brian to discuss music.

The three boys spent the afternoon drinking coffee in the sun, only casually discussing their plans; Jay did not want to entertain the notion that Alex was still untrustworthy, and Seth was having second thoughts about Tim ever since the discovery in the changing rooms, so the conversation was stilted. They ran into Alex whilst wandering past the local playground, and he had extracted a promise from Tim to let him come around and plan the music with him later.

The ride back to Tim's house was interesting – with the rain, Tim's driving was a little erratic, and when Jay saw a STOP sign and starting shouting that the tall guy was back, Tim went three streets past his own house due to group panic before Jay realised he had been wrong.

Finally, they all pulled up outside Tim's house, and the three of them tumbled out, getting soaked despite the relatively short distance to Tim's front porch.

"Well, that was…" Tim looked at the drenched shapes of the others. "Exciting, I guess is the word?"

"It was fun," Jay said through gritted teeth, and Seth patted his hair miserably.

"Oh yeah, pouring rain," he said, tiredly. "Awesome. Have you seen Alex?"

"Oh, uh, I think he was gonna…" Tim thought for a second, "run home and change shirts, 'cause, um, he's kind of soaking right now, but he said he was gonna be back in a little bit."

Seth muttered something Tim did not quite catch, and then Jay addressed him sharply.

"Unless you wanna wait for him you should probably go too," he told him, and Seth nodded, jogging to his car and shouting his goodbyes. Jay waited until he was out of earshot and then looked at Tim.

"Well, looks like we don't have any business here anymore either," he said, and suddenly hoped Tim asked him to stay. He had the horrible feeling something was going to happen. "I guess we're done."

"Alright," Tim said. He, for his part, wanted Jay gone. He didn't know, if Alex was lying, what side Jay would be on, and he was starting to quite like Jay. He didn't want to have to punch him. "I think we're just gonna be, like, wrapping it up back here, so…"

There was a moment where Jay almost asked to stay, and Tim almost said no.

"Alright, see ya," Jay said, and then he was gone.

* * *

Jay sat in his front room, silently cursing his inability to be forceful. Tim clearly didn't believe Alex was innocent… what if he hurt him, by accident…?

_what if its_

_not an_

_accident_

Jay jumped, and then shook himself uneasily. The voice in the back of his head was getting  _animated_. Maybe he should go back, maybe he should check. He swung his legs off of the sofa, and it was as if his throat suddenly closed off.

He began to cough, and as he did so, the camera atop his television began to film him.

* * *

"So here we are," Alex said, "in… scenic… Tim's apartment… uh… in his music room." He was unsettled, for good reason. Tim had invited him to two places where  _he_ had the advantage. Conflict was imminent. "Complete with box. Of…" He snuck a glance at Tim, who was playing the ukulele with all the latent threat of a piranha. "Thing. Keyboards…"

"Making, uh, musical masterpieces with our hands," Tim said, looking up at him. Alex was acting normal – well, normal for Alex. But he still wasn't sure. This Sunday would test him.

"Ukulele, with Tim attachment," Alex continued, filming Tim. The Operator would show up  _soon_. He had promised he would show Alex  _the way_. Whatever that was. And he did not want to go to this hospital unguided.

"I just wrote this song like, two minutes ago," he said, and went back to plucking the strings. Maybe Jay was right.

"Another keyboard," Alex said, moving the camera down. "Complete with beats." He hit one of the keys, and it started playing a random drumbeat.

"I define 'song' pretty loosely right now," Tim continued, "because… this is atrocious."

"Why am I holding the camera?" Alex asked, pointing it at Tim.

"Because you're the… movie guy," Tim said, not looking at him.  _And it means you have your hands full if you try and attack me,_  he added in his head. As if reading his thoughts, Alex pushed the camera towards him.

"Then you be the  _behind_ -the-movie guy," he smiled, and Tim took the camera, smiling back and wondering if he could actually embed Alex's glasses in his skull with one hand.

Brian choose this moment to walk in, and he pushed his murderous thoughts to the back of his head.

"A little bit more on topic," Alex said, toying with the keyboard, and Tim looked up at Brian.

"Oh, hey, there's Brian, what's up, dude," he said, grateful for the other guy's presence. Brian responded, towel-drying his hair, and Tim nodded. "Nice towel you got there."

"Oh thanks," Brian said, and Tim's eyes opened wide as he moved the towel to reveal a faux-hawk for the records.

"That's a nice  _hair_  you got there," he continued, and Brian smiled icily as Alex interrupted with something that Tim did not hear.

"That's why I'm the  _star_ ," Brian replied to Alex, and sat himself down so they were in a triangle.

"Uh, but, Seth and I have been going over the footage," Alex said, and Tim nearly shot Brian a look. Seth had been spending time with Alex as well? Had he really lost so much ground in the group already? "And I think we have enough now to where we can start putting together a trailer."

"Trailer," Tim echoed in a whispery voice.

"And we've been thinking about music, I think I wanna go with, more along the acoustic lines," Alex continued, staring at Brian at Tim zoomed in on him. "So do you wanna help record some stuff… on your ukulele… or…?" he asked Tim, and Tim realised that his silence was probably a little weird.

"I could probably do that," Tim said slowly. "I mean, I got this ukulele about a week ago…" It was insane, he was just  _talking_  to the guy who might be trying to kill them all. "So, I can't exactly promise I'd be any good at it but I can always try." Not a muscle moved in Alex's face, and Tim began to relax a little. Maybe he was wrong.

"Well, you have a… what I assume is some sort of guitar thing," Alex said, motioning to the case. He was about to faint, he thought – much longer in here without the Operator showing up, and he was probably going to pass out.

"You can… is it gonna be like…" Tim said.

The lights went out, and Alex slumped in relief against the wall.

"Is it gonna be, like, dark?" Tim finished, and every muscle in his body tensed as his head swam momentarily.  _No_. The Masked Guy was not showing up here, when his mask was in the other room. No, no,  _no_.

"There's going to be significantly more lighting," Alex said, and listened. He couldn't hear the voice, the voice he was desperate to hear. This had been a trick. Seth had waited outside, cut the power to the apartment, and now they would all fall on him like rabid wolves.

"Well, I also like to be able to  _see_ ," Tim said, "so I'm going to go and try and find the breaker box." Alex relaxed a little. If it came down to a fight between the masked man and himself, at least it would be light. "I've never had to use it before," Tim continued, and stood up, stumbling out where he knew the doorway to be. "Ow!" he yelped as he collided with his sofa, and heard Alex laugh behind him, a light-hearted laugh between friends at a mishap, and he felt the strongest misgivings yet.

He stepped forward, and the lights came back on.

"Oh, never mind," he said, and turned around.

_tim_

There as a moment – a brief, strange moment in time where he could've sworn something was in the room with him – and he sighed as the lights went out again.

"Never mind again." He mumbled directions to himself as he tried to find a flashlight he was sure was around here somewhere, trying to get rid of the feeling something was in there with him – and his hand ran over the mask in the cupboard.

_tim_

Was the mask speaking to him? He felt his fear settle a little – after all, the mask seemed to be on  _his_  side – and his hand settled on the torch.

"There we go."

He shuffled along the wall to where the breaker box lived, and had a mess with the switches for a few seconds.

"Great… power's just… off," he whispered to himself. He clicked the torch on, and made his way into the other room. "Good news, guys, we have  _flashlight_ ," he said, still exasperated, and as he shone it on Alex, the boy gave a wide, terrifying grin.

"Even better news," he said, and Tim gripped the flashlight, prepared to stove Alex's head in should he try anything. "Guess what's battery powered."

The keyboard burst into sound, and Tim found himself suddenly aching from how tense he had been all night. Alex wasn't about to try anything – not here, not in the apartment – possibly not ever. That mask had made him paranoid.

"Oh, this day just got  _so_  much better," he said, and though he tried to sound sarcastic, he meant it. Alex was just being normal, finally relaxing in the presence of friends after so long – god knew how  _he_  had come across, twitching at every sound, every movement Alex made. "Well, hey, about that acoustic soundtrack," he said, looking at Alex as he tried to juggle the camera as he sat down. "I guess that's the only choice we have now, so, uh…"

"Jam session," Alex grinned into the dark. "Brian on the triangle, everyone."

"I'm afraid I don't  _own_  a triangle, because I'm not in third grade any more," Tim said, and Alex and Brian laughed. Tim threw Brian the flashlight and regained his grip on the camera. This was almost like old times.

Alex began jamming on the piano, and Brian held up the flashlight.

"Am I getting good lighting on Alex here?" he asked jokingly, and Tim nodded.

"He looks so dramatic," Tim grinned, and then the entire world seemed to slow down as Alex smiled at them, a figure rushed in, and the room went dark again.

* * *

Jay picked himself off of the floor, in the dark, with tears running down his face, at some time of the night. He couldn't remember what time it was, but his throat was raw and he could taste blood. He pushed himself up, arms trembling, and his entire body shook with terror as he heard his front door swing open.

"Jay?"

It was Tim. He felt arms pick him up and sit him on the sofa, and as Tim found the light-switch the first thing he saw was the blood that clung to his carpet in thick, dark chunks.

"Uhh," he groaned, and heaved as Tim raced over to him again.

"Jay, fuck," Tim murmured, and Jay turned to him, face ice-white.

"It… it was here," he whispered, and shoved his camera into Tim's hands.

"Jay, listen to me," Tim said hurriedly. "You can't trust Alex. He's… it is him. It is him." Jay looked at him, eyes dull and dead, and he shook his head. "He tricked us all, he even fucking tricked me for a moment. It's, you've got to believe me, it's him."

Jay saw the look in Tim's eyes, and nodded.

"He's going to try to tell you it's me," Tim said, and turned his head. "He's… he's…"

He couldn't bring himself to say that Alex had already convinced Brian, Seth, everyone, but he shook his head, and instead told Jay what had happened after the tall man had invaded his flat.

* * *

_Tim had been bowled over by Brian leaping towards him, gasping in horror. The tall figure had looked to Alex, who was now on his feet, and as the creature grabbed Brian and started to_ _**whisper** _ _to him Alex had taken the opportunity to grab Tim and pin him to the floor._

_"I know," he had whispered, mouth inches from Tim's ear, and then had jumped up, flying at the Operator. Tim had seen Brian's face as Alex had pulled him away from the creature, and pushed him towards the door._

_"Run!" Alex had barked at Brian. "Just_ _**run** _ _!"_

hello

tim

_The shock on Brian's face as he had looked directly at Tim had told the boy that he had lost Brian's allegiance, and as the Operator loomed over him, Alex had nodded, and vanished._

* * *

"He knows what?" Jay asked feebly, and Tim considered telling him about 'Masky', as he had dubbed his other half. It would mean Alex could not use it a weapon, but it would also mean leaving himself totally open to Jay's attacks now, and as Jay was  _still_  not convinced about Alex, as he could see, he chose against it.

"That we were suspicious about him. That we thought they were in league. And they  _are_ ," he said, and Jay nodded. "What were you doing when you got attacked?"

"I was going to come back to yours. I… I wanted to make sure you didn't hurt him. If he didn't deserve it," Jay said quietly, and Tim held in his frustration with a deep breath and a clenched fist. "And it stopped me."

"It clearly didn't want too many people there," Tim said quietly, and Jay nodded.

"So what are we doing? Acting normal whilst he attacks us?" Jay asked, and Tim shook his head. "What?"

"He's going out to this place with me, on Sunday. If I don't come back, run. Tell everyone to get the fuck away," he said. "Where is Sarah? Seth? What are they doing right now?"

"Sarah and Seth are heading to Brian's, I think," Jay murmured. "I didn't want to tell you until I was sure, but we found where the Masked Man's been hiding out." Tim froze. "The changing rooms at the old sports field. There's food, pills…"

Tim couldn't help it. His eyes shot to his pocket, and Jay noticed. His mind rewound back to that time, at Brian's house, where Tim had turned up ill and – and had to take his medication. He swallowed the accusation that rose to his tongue, and nodded. After all, there was no proof that Tim was the Masked Man, or even that the Masked Man was dangerous.

Tim was obviously willing to ignore the subject as well, and they fell to discussion on what they should do if Tim was not to return.


	22. Entry 56

In the end, Tim and Alex didn't go to the hospital for another week; a week where Tim saw almost everyone abandon him and cut off conversation, leaving him alone. Only Jay still kept in touch, coming around to play video games and avoid the conversational topic of Alex.

Alexander Kralie found himself back in the gang, conversely; something that left him sickened. The group's meandering affections were of no use to him, any more, and he did not want the emotional risk of getting too attached to them. The only one he still felt anything more than hatred for was Jay; and he was working on removing all emotions for him. He was going to enjoy filming Tim's agonising death, and making Jay watch the tape before he died. Maybe he would let him find it – but then again, the thought of prising his eyes open a lá  _A Clockwork Orange_  was appealing.

It was Wednesday before he considered phoning Tim and rearranging the trip to the mental facility. He regretted having exposed his knowledge of Tim's other persona; it would've been a card to his chest to have kept it secret. Maybe he could lie it away.

His cell pressed to his ear, he listened as it rang, once, twice, three times. Maybe Tim was running around in his little mask, he thought sardonically.

"Tim here."

"Oh… uh, Tim," Alex said, and expected Tim to hang up immediately. When he didn't, he pressed on. "It's Alex."

"What do you want," Tim said flatly.

"I wanted to… apologise," Alex said slowly, and there was silence. "I'm sorry I attacked you. At your house."

"What." Tim sounded utterly incredulous.

"I thought… I thought you were working with… it. But I talked to Jay," Alex said smoothly, "and he told me  _everything_." There was a small intake of breath, and Alex's eyes narrowed. He wondered, not for the first time, what they had discussed.

"And?" Tim asked, carefully.

"I was wondering if you wanted to film, today. Just me and you. We could… resolve our differences," Alex suggested, and there was a little more silence.

"Okay." Tim's voice was neutral, emotionless… but there was caution in there, if you listened closely. "When?"

* * *

Sarah got a phone call as she sat on her bed eating toast and watching cartoons. She jumped a little, wondering who it could be, and picked up.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Sarah, I've… I've found something. About Tim," Alex said seriously, and Sarah nearly choked on her toast.

"What is it?" she asked, and Alex gave a cough.

"I can't tell you over the phone. I need to show you. Can you meet me tonight?" he asked, and she agreed immediately. "I'll pick you up."

As Sarah hung up, Alex looked at the picture in his hands, and smiled. He had forgotten about his picture of Tim putting on the mask – and now seemed the perfect time to use it.

_well done_

* * *

"I almost thought that you've given up on this place, since it's been so long since I've told you about it," Tim said, as they walked along the railway tracks. Alex nodded, smiling gently at him.

"Yeah, stuff came up," he said ruefully.

"It happens," Tim said hurriedly, not wanting to upset Alex. "Yeah, actually, are we filming anything today?"

"No I'm not going to shoot anything without Brian here," Alex said quietly, and Tim looked sideways at him. He seemed subdued.

"Ok. When is he supposed to get here?" he asked, and Alex shrugged.

"Well, he'll be here tomorrow, and Seth will be here later today," he said, and Tim nodded.

"Alright, so we're just doing preliminary location scouting?" he prompted.

"Yep," Alex said, and Tim gave up.

"Works for me."

* * *

The building was very much a ruin – Tim shuddered when he thought of the last time he had been there. It had been so much more alive.

"I'll take a wild guess and say this is it," Alex said, sounding a little more cheerful than he had during their walk there, and Tim nodded, still allowing old memories to wash over him.

"Uh…yes, that would be a correct guess," he said, still staring as they traipsed along.

He could remember his mother coming to visit, his room being beautiful and blank and calming – until that night.

"Um…see, if I remember correctly, I think it's three floors, a basement…we might be able to get up on the roof, so, I think you can just kind of take a look around if you want to," he offered, and Alex brushed him off, still staring at the building.

"Yeah…alright," the wanna-be director mumbled. This was  _perfect_.

"There's a lot of graffiti on the first floor, so, not sure how much of that you'll be able to use," Tim added as they walked inside, and the smell of plaster dust and burnt  _everything_  attacked him. "As you can see."

Alex looked around, and could see the look of nostalgia in Tim's eyes. He'd been here before – well, he knew that, but he'd been here often enough to form memories, an attachment. Had it been him who had set Alex up in the first place?

They spent about an hour and a half just walking around the lower floor. Alex saw as Tim navigated him through corridors, leading him to places with accuracy and foreknowledge. Part of him was fascinated – it was like watching a rat in a maze that he has navigated before, in his worst nightmares.

Tim filmed Alex. Alex didn't seem to have been here before, and this put him more and more at ease. Being back here – it all felt connected, everything in his life, and he was thankful to see that Alex was perhaps just a victim of Tim's own paranoia. He still wasn't making up his mind until they got home, though.

Something scratched at his throat as Alex approached a window, and he began to cough violently, throat aching. Jesus, maybe Brian was right – maybe he should cut down.

"Is there a building over there?" Alex asked, and time seemed to slow way down for Tim as terror chose that moment to grip onto his windpipe and squeeze.  _Not there not the tunnels no no no…_

"Yeah, but it's just like an annex, nothing special. This place is way better," he said hurriedly, trying to keep his tone neutral to keep Alex's interest at bay.

_he's lying_

Only Alex heard the voice, and he straightened up, eyes glittering in the dim light.

"No, let's go. I want to see it," he said insistently, and Tim began coughing again, worse this time.

"Well, I'm kind of not sure if I feel like I'm up to going to another place. If you don't mind," he said weakly, and Alex turned to him, shoulders hunched as if he were squaring up to him.

"I do mind. There is no way this place could pass as a school," he said, and then settled down, mindful of being too forceful. "I'll just go over there with Seth when he gets here."

"Fine with me," Tim said, and walked into the next room.

* * *

Tim sighed as Alex scrutinised the walls carefully. Ever since he had seen the annex, he had been super-fascinated in there, and if he went, then he would want to look at the tunnels, and last time Tim had been in the tunnels, the building had been on fire, and a panic attack really wasn't high up his to-do list today at all…

"Well you know, compared to the rest of this place, this room doesn't really have a whole lot of graffiti in it. You could probably use it at some point." He stepped towards Alex. "Don't you think?"

"Yep," Alex said, in a way that meant, 'Nope'.

"I mean unless you're okay with having, like, Nancy hearts Kevin on the wall, or something," Tim added, and Alex ignored him. "So are we going upstairs or downstairs?"

_up_

"Let's go up," Alex said, and Tim nodded.

"Okay, well the stairs that go up are all the way over there, but we can do that," Tim said, and as he turned Alex was already ahead of him.

* * *

Jay was sat at home. He had been staring at his kitchen wall for half an hour now, and had gotten through three cups of coffee in only a little more time. He kept checking his phone, his pager – even his MSN account he didn't even think Tim  _had_. He was paranoid. It was almost 4pm now, and if he didn't hear back from Tim soon he was… he was going to…

_what_

_panic?_

* * *

"Maybe this room down here will be…uh…more to your liking," Tim said acerbically as they walked down the corridor. "So I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but…this good? Maybe?" He needed to pee. Extremely, painfully so. And they were three floors up.

"I don't know," Alex said, and Tim decided that he was going to punch him regardless of whether he tried to murder him or not.

"Okay. Well, uh… there has to be some room in this place that you like, somewhere," he snapped, letting his anger get the best of him. "'cause this place isn't exactly tiny." His bladder twinged, and he sighed, looking around. There was a convenient wall, and he assumed Alex wasn't exactly going to film him taking a slash. "I got to take a leak. Hang on."

Alex watched as he wandered around the corner.

_hit him_

_now_

"So, we haven't been down to the basement yet. There might be someplace down there that we can use. We might want to head down there," Tim said from behind the door, and Alex looked around. Ah, a piece of piping. Ideal. "So do you wanna-"

Tim was out as soon as the bar hit his head, but Alex hit him a few more times anyway. Just to make sure. And for revenge.


	23. Entry 57

Tim groaned, and tried to move. His first thought was that he was paralyzed – nothing in his body wanted to do his bidding, but finally he managed to cajole his agonised body into doing what he wanted, and he unfolded himself slowly but surely from where he lay on the floor.

He ached – his body was full of agony where whatever Alex had hit him with had connected; he ached even more from lying on the floor for what must've been hours, since it was dark; and to top it all off, Alex had left him lying in a stream of his own piss. What a nice guy. He was going to rip off his head when he caught-

His head swam, and he  _felt_  his masked other half try to surface. No.  _No_. No no no…

He pushed it back, feeling its disappointment, and looked around. There. On the floor. Alex's camera. He grasped it, and turned it on, turning it over in his hands to face him before groaning and nearly collapsing. His masked self came back, less urgently this time, and pushed him to his feet.

He hadn't taken his medication. He needed his medication.

* * *

Sarah sat in Alex's car, and he pulled up at the hospital, before coming around to her side of the car and opening it.

"Why are we here?" she asked, voice full of fear, and he shook his head.

"You have to see."

He led her into the hospital, and she followed, taking his hand as he guided her over patches of rubble. At length, he pulled her into a room, and gestured.

"This was Tim's room," he said, voice audibly nervous, and Sarah looked at Alex, and nodded.

"…and?" she asked, and he pulled the picture out of his pocket, handing it to her. She gasped, eyes wide, and then looked at Alex, who nodded, running a hand over the back of his head.

"He's the guy. The guys who's sold us out," he mumbled, and Sarah stared at the picture. It made so much  _sense_ , and she was angry at herself for believing Tim's lies. "We're in a mental hospital. I was going to bring him here with Brian, but… I found this on the floor." Sarah felt sick, for the danger to her and to Brian.

"So, where is he now?" she asked, and Alex shook his head again.

"Somewhere here. I brought you because… he's obsessed with you, or something," he said, and Sarah felt a wave of fear, hot and slow and nauseating, slide through her. "That's why he was at your window. I thought you could talk him down." He winced, and pulled his hand away from the back of his head, revealing blood on his fingers.

"Are you hurt?" Sarah gasped, and Alex shook his head.

"He gave me a good smack with a rock or something," he mumbled.

"You shouldn't have driven, you should've told me, you should've called the police!" Sarah said worriedly, rummaging through her purse for her cell phone, and Alex nodded.

_now_

Very calmly, he seized her by the throat and squeezed.

* * *

Tim wandered through the halls of the asylum, mind fogged and blank. He was given an occasional prod by his masked self, but other than that his concussed mind had no idea where he was going. He was cold, and alone, and he couldn't stop coughing, and the thought of having a seizure terrified him so much that he was the closest to tears he had ever been in his life without quite daring to lose control and sob.

He knew that if he didn't find his way out soon, then he would be in trouble, but there were two entrances, one that led practically out into Rosswood and then he would be lost forever. He knew he had one shot, and that was to get to the railway. There he could make it into town, back to safety. He could warn Jay and Brian and Sarah and Seth.

A light.

There was a light at the end of a corridor. A window, a streetlamp, Jesus Christ's motorcycle headlight, he didn't really give a fuck right then, and he raced towards it, desperate for anything that would give him a direction.

Alex Kralie's flashlight.

 _That_  stopped him dead in his tracks, and he turned. The stairs. He stopped, and reassessed the original plan of charging down them like a bull elephant. Assuming they were capable of staying fixed to the wall when ran down, they would still clang like the tolling of Hell's bells, and just because he was outside now did not mean Alex would not hear.

Was this the Rosswood side?

He couldn't remember.

He felt… sleepy…

* * *

Sarah fought and writhed, not enough air in her lungs to scream as Alex held her down, face still and unmoving. She had to run out of air sooner or later, he reasoned. She had already fought him off once, and had made it halfway down the corridor, gasping hoarsely through her abused throat.

Now she was slowing down, eyelids fluttering. It took longer than it did in movies, but he had to make sure he had not just left her unconscious.

_like you did_

_with tim_

"What?" Alex snapped, and the shadow next to him leant over the two of them. Sarah's eyes widened, and she let out a rasping squeal not unlike an air horn that is running out of air.

_he's not dead_

_you imbecile_

_leave her to me_

"Not dead?" Alex asked, standing up, and the Operator faced him, blank face emotionless – obviously.

_no_

_go and find him_

Alex ran, grabbing his flashlight, and the Operator knelt down next to Sarah. One tentacle snaked out from behind its back, and caressed her cheek.

_now dear_

_i hope you kissed brian_

_goodnight_

* * *

Tim was sat outside the annex, frightened and miserable. There were lights everywhere; and he could not be sure if they were cars, Alex's car, police cars, Alex with a flashlight, will-o-wisps sent to mislead him into the woods.

He was struggling to stay awake.

 _It's a sign of a concussion, you know_.

And there was a little voice in his head, as well.

He coughed, once, and felt his head swim alarmingly.

 _Just let go. I'll get us away_.

He wasn't trusting any voices in his head. Not after he knew that the tall guy was here. And he wasn't letting himself sleepwalk his way into danger.

Lights.

Lights again.

He pushed himself to his feet, and tottered towards a door. Any door.

He had to stay  _awake_.

* * *

Alex stormed through the corridors, flashlight raised. How  _could_  he have been so stupid? He had to find Tim and kill him before he could get back and tell Jay.

He stiffened suddenly, a shock running through him. He had left his camera. Not the camera showing his attack on Tim – he had not been  _that_  stupid – but his camera, the camera that would place him with Tim on the day Tim vanished. He had left it on the floor like a total idiot, and now he was going to have to go up and get him back.

So distracted was he by his train of thought, he failed to notice Tim come up the corridor behind him, stop, stare for a moment, and then duck into hiding. He did hear the sound of one of Tim's sneakers scrape across the floor, and he turned, eyes narrowed.

Tim held his breath, desperate to keep in his hacking coughs, and as Alex walked past, inches from him, he slid backwards, desperate to keep as silent as possible. He backed into a room, noting that it led to another room, and backed into there, creeping through rooms as he listened to Alex's footsteps get further away.

He waited, holding his breath, until finally his legs gave way and he fell to the floor, landing as quietly as was possible. He felt a cough rise in his throat, and clapped his hand to his mouth, feeling as something scratched at his jugular.

_you really are_

_quite something_

_i should've chosen_

_you_

He wasn't even sure if he heard the voice or if it was in his head as he slid out of consciousness, but he felt his other half shout as he passed out.

_Get off of me!_


	24. Entry 51

Alex was not in a good mood.

He had chosen Brian for his next victim, if you could really call it 'next' – he had not recovered Tim. The boy had eluded him throughout the entire hospital, and eventually the Operator had made him go home, having taken Sarah away. He wasn't sure where, but he knew that nobody was going to find that body, wherever it had gone.

Tim's body turning up though, especially if it was still alive, was not something he wanted to consider.

He had tried to call Jay – had gotten through, had had a normal conversation. He was going to kill him last, he had decided – as his best friend, it was kind of fitting. He had arranged to do some filming with him in the woods – he didn't want to kill him at the hospital. If people kept vanishing after they went there with him, it was going to look slightly suspicious. He was just glad Sarah's parents had assumed she was going out with Brian.

But at least he would've gotten rid of Brian, soon enough. This thought cheered him up a little.

* * *

Jay was in bed, panicking.

Tim hadn't come back.

Alex had called him, and he had sounded so cool, and calm, and composed, that Jay  _knew_  there was something wrong. Alex was his best friend –  _had_  been his best friend. He knew him inside out, or had done until three months or so ago, and he could hear the lies as Alex told him Tim had gone home early during the shoot. No, he hadn't spoken with him since he went home. Did Jay want to shoot on Friday?

No, Jay did  _not_  want to fucking shoot on Friday.

Jay wanted to rewind a year, to when Alexander Kralie and Brian Monaghan and James Warner were the best of friends and used to eat the stupidly big Subway sandwiches they bought at the picnic table outside the Student Union and hit on Amy's friends and drive to the next county to see bands and  _never ever have to worry about a ten-foot tall supernatural monster brainwashing his best friend_.

He curled up in the bed, and began to cry hysterically, not even caring as tears ran sideways across his face and down through his hair onto the pillow.

* * *

"Are you recording now?" Brian asked, voice short and strained, and Alex, serene in his confidence that everything was going at least 98% according to plan, nodded, not even looking up from the railway track.

"Yeah, I'm just getting some B-reel," he said, and Brian looked at him.

"Where's Seth then?" he asked, voice still very clipped, and Alex shrugged, a smile playing across his lips.

"Uh, we came out here yesterday," he lied, "and he wasn't feeling too good, so he just stayed home today."

"Oh, that sucks," Brian said shortly, and stared at Alex, who was still smiling at the ground, contentedly.

"Alright," he said, at length. "What I'm gonna do with this is, uh, set it up right here so you can't see my shadow, uh, and we'll have you walk along the frame, starting where you are and, uh, let me change the tape…"

He faffed around, Brian shooting him irritated looks, and then he smiled up at him.

"Alright, you… you ready?" Brian asked, and Alex nodded.

"Yeah, just walk along here; if you wanna walk along the rail, that's fine, just… reflective," he said, and smiled as Brian obeyed. Like a performing monkey. "That's right. Just keep going. I'll tell you when you're out of the frame again."

"Okay. Cool, cool," Brian said, and proceeded to balance his way along the rails. "Are we allowed to talk now, or just be silent?"

"Yeah, I'm just going to put music over it," Alex said, generously. It was going to be the last talking Brian ever did. He watched as Brian meandered down the rail. Was he going to ask about Sarah? He  _hoped_  he would ask about Sarah. Especially  _just_  before he died. That'd be quite nice. "Alright, that's good! Come on back!"

They did some more work by the railway, Alex not wanting to appear  _too_  eager to get Brian to the building; he was also quite unwilling to bump into Tim, if he was going to, and then Alex suggested they go, if they had spent all that gas money.

* * *

Jay was quite surprised by Seth's reaction, which was to open the door on the latch and glare at him.

"Go away, Jay," Seth mumbled, and Jay's brow furrowed.

"Come on, dude, Tim is missing," he said, and Seth nodded.

"Why do I care?" he asked, and Jay shook his head, mouth falling open in an expression of confusion.

"Because Alex might've, I dunno, murdered him?" he said sarcastically, and Seth shook his head.

"So when did you turn on your best friend?" he asked quietly. "You know it's Tim. You  _know_. I remembered the pills. Did you? The pills Tim took? The bottles we found in the Masked Man's hideaway?"

And with that, the door was shut.

* * *

"So, what is this place?" Brian asked, and Alex shrugged, staring at the annex.

"Uh," he said, searching for a lie. "I think it was like, an old doctor's office or something. Uh, when Seth and I were out here yesterday, we found it and I thought it looked cool… so I figured we could come out here and get some shots."

"S'kinda creepy," Brian said shortly.

"Yeah, it's got the whole 'burned-out-building' feel to it," Captain Alex Obvious contributed.

"So, what are we gonna be shooting in this part?" Brian persisted, and Alex felt his patience wear thin already. Brian was a little too questioning.

"Uh, figured we could just get some B-reel, and say that it's like, Brian's old elementary school, or something like that, that burned down," he said, guiding Brian towards the room where he had killed Sarah.

"You sure we're not gonna get in trouble for being here?" Brian asked, and Alex shrugged.

"Ah, we might. It's a burned-out building, who cares," he said, now trying to ignore Brian. He was somewhat lost… was it left? Right?

"As long as you let me leave after we get the shot done, dude," Brian said nervously, and Alex wondered just how much Brian knew about why they were here.

"We'll make it quick," he said, and meant not a bit of it.

They did a few scenes around the place, Brian acting nervous and out-of-sorts for the whole thing, and riling up Alex's temper – 'was I supposed to be silent?' 'you  _were_ …' – until Alex tired of finding a symbolic room and settled for 'outside'.

"What I want you to do is just come up and lean against this door," Alex explained, and Brian did so.

"This alright?" he asked, and Alex wondered just how you could lean against a door wrong.

"Yeah, and just sorta lean your head against it," he continued. "And, er, keep your head down, and we'll do a few shots of this…"

"Okay," Brian said tetchily. "You want hands in the pockets?" He had the nerve to  _glare_  at Alex, as if Alex was wasting  _his_  time rather than the other way around.

"Yeah, keep your hands in the pockets…" he backed away, and began filming, just as Brian began to cough. "Okay, we're rolling." Brian staggered offscreen, clutching his chest, and Alex nodded. "Good take."

Brian apologised, got back into shot, and they began again. As they did so, Brian turned his head to look down towards the foliage, and Alex had to commend his perception.

"Are you sure we should be here?" he asked nervously, and Alex smiled.

"It's fine, Brian," he said, calmly.

"I was just wondering," Brian stuttered, "I just, I don't want someone walking up to us and like, getting arrested or something…"

Alex had to commend his lack of perception.

"Well, the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can leave. Bear with me," he said, and then a familiar voice announced the presence of someone.

_ah, brian_

_it seems i have_

_a matching set_

Brian turned, and then Alex hit him with a camera.

* * *

Brian awoke much later, to a throbbing pain of the head.

He was still outside, and it didn't seem to be much later. The camera was even still there, but – and here he blanched – Alex wasn't.

"Alex!" he shouted, seizing the camera, and looked around. "Alex, where are you?!"

He ran. He didn't know where – into the building.

"Alex!"

He ran through corridors, through double-doors, through big rooms and small. He didn't care where he ended up, as long as there were people there and that  _thing_  wasn't anywhere near him. He did, however, wonder at one point if leaving the outside and heading into the building was a bad idea.

"Alex?!"

There was a cough, and he skidded to a halt, glancing around him.

"Alex?"

It was silent as he waited for a response, breathing pained in his chest. Then, there was another cough, and he followed it down a corridor, dodging pipes and rubble as he followed the noise.

"Alex! Where are you?"

He turned, pausing in the doorway, and his mind temporarily unravelled in shock.

"Tim?"

Tim was huddled in the corner, eyes barely even focusing, wrapped in what seemed to be an old, mouldy blanket. He was shaking, and Brian would've bet hypothermia, if his brain could even spell it right then.

"Tim," he gasped, and knelt next to him. So Tim hadn't gone home. But that meant… that meant… Alex…

There were footsteps outside.

"Alex, seriously, come on!" Brian shouted, turning to the door, and gasped as the tall man stood there.

_sarah will be_

_glad_

_to see you_

Alex watched as one tentacle snaked out, and there was a snap, and then Brian fell to the floor. More tentacles wrapped around Brian's prone form, and as he was dragged away Alex walked into the room and picked up the camera, giving Tim a cold glare.

_leave tim_

_to me_

He walked out, listening to the snapping and crackling as Brian was… taken. Now, there was only Seth left to go… and then…

Jay.


	25. Entry 22: Part 1

Alex sat on his bed. He had rehearsed this – for hours and hours, in front of his mirror. He needed there to be a get-out clause, a reason to throw suspicion off of him. He was due to meet Seth in a few hours, so he had elected to record his 'confession' beforehand, in case – in case it went wrong.

"Seth is gone," he began, staring into the camera, and his voice sounded too high. He let himself stutter a little. "I don't remember what happened." He shook his head very slightly, and let his eyes focus behind the camera. Thousand yard stare.

"We were the only two left," he said, and faux-disgust crossed his face. "And I left him." He bit his lip, and swallowed, before continuing.

"Brian is gone."

He paused.

"And Tim is, and Jay, and Sarah."

What was appropriate? Sorrow for Jay? Fear? He settled for shell-shocked.

"Everyone is gone."

Blank stare. Monotone voice. Was he overplaying this?

"I just woke up in this house. With the tape. Seth's camera is gone. All I can remember from the night is right here."

He saw as the Operator materialised in the corner of the room, watching with folded arms, and fixed his gaze on him.

"All I can remember at all is on the tape now."

The Operator tilted its head.

"I'm leaving this house," Alex continued, and the Operator faded out of his vision to reappear beside him. He doubted he would show up on the camera. Somehow, that was better. The Operator gently stroked his head with one hand, and Alex felt somehow comforted by the gesture.

"I thought I would be safer here," Alex mumbled, and the Operator placed its hand gently on his head. "By running away.

He paused, clearing his throat, and the Operator lifted its hand away to tap against the wall impatiently.

"But everything has just gotten worse."

He felt a small pang, in the tiny bit of his soul that still belonged to the old Alexander Randal Kralie.

"I'm going back to my home," he said, and bit his lip. "And I'm burning these tapes. All of them."

_nice touch_

"Thank you," he whispered.

_don't waver now_

_all that stands between you_

_and my favour_

_are seth and jay_

"Jay," Alex said, and felt a hot tear run down his cheek.


	26. Entry 22: Part 2

Jay jumped as his phone rang, and he stared at the number.

Tim.

"Tim?!" he gasped, and the voice on the other end shook with exhaustion.

"Jay… you… have to listen to me…"

"Tim, what happened?" Jay said, and there was a cough.

"Go to my house. There's a bag, in a cupboard. Get the bag, bring it to… bring it to the gazebo in Rosswood.  _Do not look inside it_.Then get out. Get to your moms, get wherever, just… just leave."

"Where are you?" Jay asked, voice steely.

"Jay, he's killed Brian. Sarah too, I think," Tim coughed weakly. "Jay, it wants…" Then the phone call cut off in a buzz of static.

* * *

Seth jumped as his phone rang, and he stared at the number.

Alex.

"Seth." Alex's voice was shaking, and he was breathing heavily.

"Alex, are you okay?" Seth asked, and there was a cough on the other end of the phone.

"Get… get to Brian's. In the… in the basement. It's Tim…" Alex coughed again, and Seth's teeth gritted. He  _knew_  it. "Seth…" Static crackled. "So… sorry…" The phone cut off.

Seth leapt up, and grabbed his coat.

* * *

Jay burst through Tim's door, and looked around. It was dark; even in the middle of the day, it was so dark, and he flicked the light switch. Nothing. That meant the  _thing_ , the creature, was probably here, or perhaps the masked man.

He ran into the living room, and ran to the cupboard. Tim had said it was in a bag, that was all. And not to look inside. He snatched up the first bag, the only bag, and glanced around. Tim's pills. Tim must need them; he doubted he'd have taken them with him. He snatched up the first non-empty bottle he saw, and bolted, not even bothering to shut the door behind him.

* * *

Seth found the door leading to Brian's basement, and opened it.

The stench of decay and mould hit him, and he winced at the sour air, taking a step down, flashlight picking out nothing more than the few steps before him.

"Alex?" he called, and there was a cough from the far end of the basement. He picked up his pace, and found Alex huddled in a corner, clutching a camera.

"Is he here?" Alex asked groggily, and Seth pulled him up, brushing the dust and dirt from him. "Is Tim here?"

"No, no, now come on…" Seth said, and the flashlight flickered out.

* * *

Tim staggered through the woods, letting his inner masked psychopath guide him. The gazebo wasn't far, he thought muzzily, and as it came into view he saw that Jay had tucked his bag under one of the seats.

He staggered across the wood – how strange that this is where his mask began and this is where it was probably going to end up – and knelt down, one hand sliding into the bag.

"Tim?"

He turned, eyes wild, and saw Jay staring at him in horror.

"Jay, go," he croaked, and Jay rushed forward, catching him as he nearly fell over.

"Shit, we need to get you back," Jay whispered, and stared at the bruises that had begun to blossom on Tim like ugly purple flowers. "Shit, shit, what did he do…"

"He hit me, with a pipe," Tim rasped, and began to cough so hard that Jay had to hold him up. The boy pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket, and then reached into the bag. Tim nearly threw up, but Jay merely pulled out a water bottle and pushed them into his hands.

"Don't worry, I didn't look in the bag, I just shoved it in there. Take these," he said seriously, and Tim nodded, feeling calm wash across his brain as he put two pills into his hand – put them in his mouth – swallowed – chased them down with a gulp of water. "Now, we have to call an ambulance for you-"

"No," Tim said harshly. "You are  _leaving_ , and I am going to go and kick Alex in the d-"

"I'm coming with you," Jay said, and Tim glared at him. "Excuse me, Tim, but you are in no shape to go  _anywhere_  alone. You're, you're bleeding, and you're battered, and Alex is my  _goddamn_  best friend, so don't you  _dare_  try and stop me!"

* * *

"Is it working?" Alex whispered, and Seth stared at the camera. The flashlight had come back on – but this was  _most certainly_  not Brian's basement. For a start, it was  _enormous_.

Alex was amused by the fact that the Operator could teleport them from place to place. He wasn't looking forward to paying the gas money to get back to the hospital.

"Keep it rolling," he continued, and Seth nodded. "I don't know where we are… but…"

He stopped talking and kept walking, and then turned back, reaching over and clicking a button on the top of the camera as if it were merely an afterthought. The night vision clicked on, and Seth placed the camera to his face. He could see much better that way.

"Where do you think we are?" he asked quietly, and Alex did not answer, so Seth followed him, across the piles of rubble. They appeared to be still in a basement, albeit an enormous one, and as they passed enormous pipes Seth filmed them in wonder. How had they gotten here? Had Tim teleported them somehow?

"It's all burned," he whispered, and Alex nodded.

_go back_

Alex stopped, and looked around.

"Is that light, over there?" he mouthed to Seth, who turned his head. "Let's go."

* * *

Jay stared at the mental asylum as Tim limped determinedly towards the entrance.

"What  _is_  this place?" he asked, and Tim turned, about to shout at him, before he crumbled.

"I used to go here," he said weakly. "It's a psychiatric hospital."

Jay looked at him suspiciously, and Tim waved the pill bottle at him.

"Just don't question it," he said dully. "Believe me, I am much better now. Or rather… I was." He sighed, and sat down on the steps, Jay sitting next to him.

He could've said anything. He could've reminded Tim that Alex was still roaming free in here; he could've drilled Tim about his mental wellbeing; he could've blamed him.

Instead, he reached into the back, fingers brushing against the cold, smooth, mysterious object he wasn't allowed to look at – Tim winced – and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and Tim's favourite lighter.

Tim accepted the cigarette thankfully, and in silence; and together they sat on the doorstep and tried to delay the inevitable. They were going to die. They might as well die having had a last cigarette; even if Jay didn't normally smoke.

* * *

"Is it rolling now?!" Alex asked sharply, and Seth nodded, shaking the camera. As they had headed for the light – that Seth could not see – something had crashed above them, and then  _in the next room_ , and Alex had given chase, Seth trying to keep up and dropping the camera in his haste. Now they had fixed it, and Alex was-

There was a crash.

"It's gone back upstairs," Alex whispered, and set off for the stairs again, all the way across the maze of basement rooms. Seth followed, and wished a little that he had sided with Jay and Tim. They were probably relaxing at home with the tall guy, he thought remorsefully.

Alex stormed through the basement; he was personally getting a little tired of the legwork. Sooner or later, Seth was going to get  _pissed off_ , and he personally did not want to wait for that. He had a Jay to kill, and – and this was a concern he did not voice to the Operator – he knew if he waited too long, he'd lose the nerve to kill him.

Seth was dawdling; filming some enormous tanks that probably held water or rocket fuel or the blood of children, Alex didn't really care. He resisted the urge to rip off Seth's head, and waited for him to catch up.

_almost there_

Seth stopped, and trained the camera on the wall. Alex did not see why at first, but then he noticed the bloodstains all over the wall. Seth looked horrified.

"It's dry," Alex said, reassuringly, and Seth turned to stare at him. "Let's go."

Seth was beginning to realise what an incredible mistake he had made in choosing Alex's side.

* * *

"The basement?" Jay suggested, helping Tim over a pile of rubble, and Tim pointed. "So what happened to this place?"

"There was a fire," Tim said shortly, and winced as he landed.

"Did you start it?" Jay asked, half-joking and half-serious. Tim shrugged.

"I think something started it, that might've been interested in me," he said. "Listen, Jay, if anything goes wrong, I want you to go… to go outside." He began to cough again, and Jay flinched as the sound echoed around the room and into the corridor outside. "There's… there's an annex…" Tim took a gulp of the water, and took a deep, ragged breath before continuing. "There are maintenance tunnels. I want you to go in there, and I want you to  _hide_."

"Did you hide there?" Jay asked quietly, and Tim nodded. "When the fire happened?" Tim nodded again, and coughed once more. "Is that why you… the cough…?"

"Yup. Smoke inhalation, of two kinds," Tim said quietly, and they both laughed awkwardly. "Come on. Let's get to the basement."

* * *

Alex had had to speed Seth past a load of bricks covered in blood – Seth had nearly passed out – and was now getting more than a little angry. Was this the point? To get him so irked that he would viciously murder Seth? Was that what the Operator wanted? He'd do that  _anyway_.

 _Where_  was he leading them both?

A sudden, cold fear gripped his heart. Was he being led into a trap? Would the Operator kill him as well-

_hush_

_little alex_

_have more faith_

That was reassurance enough for him, and he stopped in a large room, with several other rooms leading off of it. Tim, Brian, Sarah, and now Seth. This was going well.

"Let's go," he said to Seth, who was now trailing reluctantly behind him. "Come on."

Seth jogged to catch up, but Alex had wandered off a little, and he swung the camera around.

_come here seth_

He heard the call, and looked to the other side of the room as Alex watched him expectantly. There was a water tank, and he could swear

_seth_

that the voice was coming from behind it. So he wandered over, and-

"Seth!"

Alex's call was the last thing Seth heard as the tall man wrapped dark tentacles around him, casting the camera to the ground, and Alex smiled beatifically.

The Operator looked sideways, and saw the horrified eyes of Jay and Tim. Perfect.

* * *

The duo watched as Seth was dragged into the shadows in horror, and in that moment Tim knew what he was going to have to do.

"Jay, stay here," he said, as calmly as he could manage. Everything was starting to go foggy, his other self quietly taking over inch by inch, no fuss, just a cold, slow flood of numbness, and he grabbed his bag, pulling out the mask.

Jay's jaw went slack as he saw it, and then he looked up at Tim with eyes full of pain and betrayal.

"I'm going to go, and I'm going to  _kill_  him," Tim said, trying not to look Jay directly in the eyes.

"You knew. You knew all along what this was," Jay whispered, voice full of venom. "You  _knew_ , and you let us all walk in here-"

He flinched as Tim's fist thudded into the wall next to his head, and Tim glared at him.

"Never, ever say that I led any of you into this," he said hoarsely. "I tried, I tried to control it, but it works in its own ways, you see?" He gave what could loosely be called a smile, if your definition of a smile included the words 'humourless' and 'pants-wettingly horrifying', and then waved the mask.

Jay's face screwed up in anger, and he punched Tim in the face. Tim took the blow, acceptingly, and then nodded.

"I'm going to be coming back to return that," he said hoarsely, and Jay nodded.

"You better had do," he said, and they both shook hands, Jay raising the camera again to film Tim as he put it on.

"How does it work?" he asked, and as Tim tilted his head towards him, eyes now invisible behind the darkness of the eyeholes, he realised that  _that_  was how it worked. "Uh."

The Masked Man lunged for him.

 _I'm so sorry, Jay_.

* * *

And now… for Jay.

Alex turned, and the Operator tilted his head.

_jay is_

_here_

_with tim_

Alex snarled.

"You  _said_ you'd take care of Tim!"

_he is_

_resilient_

Alex snarled, and stormed in a random direction, snatching up a piece of pipe from the floor as he went. Tim wasn't  _that_  resilient.

The Masked Man dragged Jay out of sight, behind a pile of rubble, and set the camera down next to him. Alex was leaving, and the further away he got from Jay, the better. He still wasn't sure this plan would work. It relied on Alex still caring for Jay, a little. It needed that.

Alex, however, was in emotional turmoil. How could Jay have teamed up with the others? How could he? Tears sparkled behind his glasses. They were  _best friends_. He raised the iron bar high, and grinned, teeth gritted. He would show him the price of betrayal-

There was a crack, and he turned just as the Masked Man leapt from behind a concrete pillar, slamming his shoulder into his sternum. Alex let out a silent, winded gasp of pain, and kneed the man in the chin, knocking him aside.

"Let's see how tough that mask  _is_ ," Alex gasped, still breathless, and swung, Masky letting out an animalistic howl of pain as it missed by inches and connected with his shoulder. "Stay  _still_ , goddamn it!"

Masky tumbled out of the way and grasped his shirt, lifting him up and then slamming him down onto the concrete floor, leaving him seeing stars. As he kneeled over him, huge eyes dark as the universe, Alex reached for him but missed, fingers seizing his pocket. As he ripped it open, something fell out, a lighter perhaps, but he ignored it as Masky pulled him up, pulling a knife from his pocket and almost cooing, like a bird, as he ran it along the edge of Alex's face.

_alex_

_or tim_

_what a choice_

Masky froze, and behind the dark eyes there was suddenly a glimpse of horror as the first dark tentacle wound around his face. Then he was snatched away, almost pulling Alex with him; if he hadn't let go, allowing Alex to tumble to the floor, he would have been lost.

Alex lay there, head against the soothing cold of the floor for what seemed like hours, listening to the sound of the devouring. Then he stood up.

One more.

* * *

He found Jay, unconscious, with his camera next to him. He picked the camera up, not in any rush now that his target was prone – or was he just reluctant to hurt Jay? Did it even matter anymore?

He only watched the last few seconds – if he had watched more, it would have made a difference,  _such_  a terrible difference, but Alexander Kralie never knew that. He saw Jay approach Tim, saw Tim turn and attack him. He saw as Tim brutally knocked Jay out, throwing him to the floor, and then he turned to the camera, snatching it up, the picture rolling.

" _He is-is-is-is not with-with us-us-us_ ," a dark voice said through the distortion, and Alex slumped, shoulders against the stone. Jay wasn't with them. Jay had come for him, Jay had come to help Alex, the Operator had been _wrong_ , and Tim had tried to make him pay for it. His heart hurt, and he rolled Jay over, slapping his face.

"Come on, wake up," he whispered fiercely, suddenly blinded by the tears in his eyes. It was over. They could go. He was going to take Jay back home. Burn the evidence. He was going to leave this stupid town and it's stupid secrets and he would let Jay live a normal life and it was  _over_.

Jay groaned, putting a hand to his head, and Alex pulled him up, breathing juddering and pained.

"A-Alex?" Jay asked, and Alex nodded. "Tim… Tim… he's… the mask…"

"It's okay. We're going to get you home, we're going to get you to a hospital."

As they limped out of the building, Alex knew that Jay would forget. The Operator would take away his memories. He knew. He had promised, after all. He wished he had been granted the same reprieve.

* * *

Tim did not know where he was.

It was cold, and dark, and he was terrified and in so much pain he could not believe it, but he felt pride in doing the right thing. Hopefully, the tape would be too fucked up to play, and what wasn't too fucked up would make Alex think Jay had never been a part of this. He felt bad for knocking him out, but the feeling of good – of, dare he ever risk saying it,  _happiness_  he felt at dying for a noble cause – outweighed that. Almost.

He began to crawl, over concrete and under pipes.

The thing that had dragged him here was gone – he couldn't feel its presence, and he sat up. His other half was dormant as well, although he could still sense it if he searched hard enough. Tuckered out, as his mother used to say.

Crawling through the dark tunnel, he emerged into bright light, and looked around. He was in the abandoned doctor's offices; he knew this place by sight now, after all. He stumbled out into the sunlight, and inhaled deeply.

God, he hoped Jay was okay-

He felt as the dark limb of the Operator dug into his head, and fell to his knees, screaming in pain.

_very impressive_

_you beat alex_

_new favourite toy_

The voice echoed through him as the pain intensified, and as everything began to fade, the screams gave way to empty whimpers as shudders wracked his body.

_you work_

_for me now_

_masked man_

He felt the memories fizzle, his other half surface, and…

_do we have a deal_


	27. Epilogue

Three years later, and Jay was humming quietly to himself as he dug through his attic.

Goddamn it, he thought, sighing. There had to be Christmas lights in here  _some_ where. He had packed them away last year, hadn't he? Jesus. He had the tree, he had the decorations… where were the  _lights_?

His hand rested on a box, and he pulled it out, brow furrowing. Maybe this was it. He didn't remember this box, but he didn't remember where he put the damn lights, either, so that matched up. He pulled it open, and stuck his hand in, pulling out a tape.

"Uh?" he mumbled, and tilted it towards the light.

'Marble Hornets – Sarah/Brian park scene'.

 _Damn_! That brought back some memories. He shook his head, and smiled, remembering the meeting the night they had decided to film it. He hadn't thought about that in nearly three years… since Alex moved away, in fact. Oh god, Alex. They had been thick as thieves. What had happened?

Sarah and Brian – he grinned as he began to pull more tapes out of the box. Oh god, they had hit it off quickly. Tim – Tim, grumpy Tim with less facial expressions than a blank mask. And Seth had filmed it – that guy Brian had dragged in.

Why couldn't he  _remember_  half this stuff? He shook his head, cursing his absent-mindedness, and thought hard. He had… had he been camera-man? He couldn't remember, but he must've been in on it, being Alex's best friend and all. Maybe he'd give them a watch later, after he'd put up the lights.

After all, what would be the harm?


End file.
